A Small Slithering Surprise

There I was - attending a boring meeting in the middle of the day. Four of us hounding the round table keying in with fury on our thinkpads, writing another purposeless document.

Suddenly, there was a movement. Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. It looked like a hairpin near of the chair's wheels. Then I saw again, it was moving. God! the hairpin was moving! I asked Amit to pick up the "hair-pin" on the carpet. He reached out, jumping back on the slight touch of the thing. It was not a hair-pin. It slithered and swayed, tried to burrow its nose (or whatever it was) into the carpet - probably trying to go down under, being the under ground dweller that it was.


There it was - small, tiny little slitherer. Slim, blind and dying. It was stamped on. May be someone had stepped on it, may be the one of the chairs had rolled over it. I don't know how, but it was at the end of its journey.

I carefully picked up the little guy on a a sheet of paper. Looked at it closely, very closely.

It was small. It was dark. It was slimy. It was not a worm for sure - it had scales. Looked like a juvenile worm snake or something to me. It was probably a Caecilian. I could not figure out where the head was. It either had none or had its head lopped off clean.

I took it outside, prodded it with my little finger. It twitched. So did I. I put it down in the grass hoping it will kick back to life. And then, it moved, it tried to burrow into the ground. Really? or was I seeing things. I was happy that the little guy will survive.

I rushed back into the meeting room and got back to work. But I was pre-occupied with the thought of the tiny guy's survival. I excused myself and went to the spot I had left the little fella.

It was still there.

And it wasn't moving. Damn! I poked it again a little, it didnt move. It lay there like it had never moved. The "hair-pin" was now crooked and stiff like its name-sake. I didn't have the heart to leave that guy out there, I moved it around but then decided that the ground is the best place for a ground-dweller to rest. I left it on a naked patch of soil and bid it good bye.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I hoped it was playing a trick on me and would slither again and burrow deep down into the ground. I hoped it will spring back to action and grow up to be a big boy. I hoped it would live. I hope...


Update: It was probably a thread snake. More info : scolecophidians