Week 7 Story: How Worms Became Blind, Underground Creatures

How Worms Became Blind, Underground Creatures

Earthworm (Wikipedia Commons)

In the beginning, the worms lived above the ground like many other animals, and they had eyes like many other animals as well.  Until one fateful day, when all of that changed.

It was easily the biggest party of Eyo's reign so far.  Anyone who was anyone was there, and as a result, there was a great diversity of animal species present.  On the third day of the party, which had become increasingly wilder as the days progressed, the inevitable species clash finally happened.

"Driver ants really the fiercest species there is--it's true!" the head driver ant proclaimed while standing on the table.  (He definitely wasn't biased.)  "Show me another species that can beat us in a fight!"

"I'll take you up on that offer," the head worm yelled, encouraged by his fellows, who had always been jealous of the ants' organizational skills.  "We'll see who's strongest!"

So, Eyo decreed that in three days' time, the driver ants and the worms would assemble on the east side of the forest, where they would battle to the death.  The worms arrived at the rendezvous first, wriggling to form a line of defense.  But when the driver ants showed up, they came in droves--an endless sea of writhing bodies packed closely together.  With a yell, the driver ants attacked, and the bloodbath began.  The worms believed that their bigger size would be to their winning advantage, but the driver ants overwhelmed them by sheer numbers.  

"Dive underground!" the head worm shrieked, and the worms were driven back by the driver ants, barely escaping the loss of their entire army.

And this is how the worms first lived underground.

In the weeks that followed their crushing defeat by the driver ants and their descent into the ground, the worms were scorned by the other animal species for their hubris.  All of the worms were discouraged by their new lowly position, but none more than the head worm.  He blamed himself for the lowly position of the worms, as it was he who accepted the driver ants' challenge in the first place.  The other worms attempted to console him.  But the only solace that he found was in emerging from the ground during rainfall to feel the cool air on his skin again.

It was during one of these ventures aboveground, about a month after the ants' victory, that the head worm encountered the elephant.  At first, the worm felt the ground trembling and thought it was an earthquake, until he spotted the source of the vibrations.  The elephant was staggering along the path, his eyelids squeezed tightly shut as he weaved back and forth drunkenly.

"Hello!  What seems to be the problem, elephant?" the worm called out.

The elephant stopped abruptly, listening.  "Is that you, worm?"

"It is," the worm replied, flattered that the elephant recognized his voice.  "Can I help you?"

"This is a bit awkward," the elephant said slowly.  "But I have lost my eyes from a trick.  Would I be able to borrow your eyes for the day?"

The worm thought about the elephant's request for only a moment before deciding firmly that he needed to do some good in the world to redeem himself.  "Yes, of course!  Just for the day isn't a big deal."

How the worm gave the elephant his eyes is best left up to the imagination, but they made the exchange.  The elephant left the worm blind on the path and continued with his business for the rest of the day, all while the worm waited in darkness for the elephant's return.

But when the elephant came back to the worm at nightfall, the two discovered an unexpected problem: the worm's small eyes had fused with the elephant's skin, and were unable to be removed.  

The head worm, now a disgrace to his species, burrowed back under the ground to report to his kin about his most recent failure, knowing that nothing less than banishment and shame awaited him below.

And this is how the worms lost their vision and went blind.

Author's Note:  For this story, I combined two Nigerian folktales into a single retelling.  The first part of the story, about how worms moved to live underground, remained as accurate to the original story as possible.  For the second story, about how worms went blind, I had to adjust a couple of the details in order to all it to flow seamlessly from the previous story, which was originally not attached to the first.  However, because both of them considered worm origin stories, I thought it might be fun to combine the two to tell the tragic history of worms.  In order to make the connection clear, I created the character of the "head worm," who is unnamed in "The Elephant and the Tortoise" story, which is told from the perspective of the elephant.  However, by telling it from the point of view of the worm, I was able to make the story much more of a tragedy than the original, because although the elephant is able to see in the end, the worms lose their eyes--a loss that I wanted to acknowledge more fully.

Bibliography: "Why Worms Live Underneath the Ground" and "The Elephant and the Tortoise," Nigeria stories, Elphinstone Dayrell.