"Annoyance"

by

Lawerence R. Calmer

I see it out of the corner of my eye; a large, no make that huge worm, pale and segmented, moving slightly. I swing my gaze around from my digging to lay drain pipe to get a better fix on this oddity. The only thing I see is a stick, a pale, weather worn branch of some sort, unmoving and not very worm like.

I conentrate again on the duty at hand of getting the pipe buried.

A worm... no a snake, just there out of the corner of my eye slithers into view. I turn once again, and again am treated to a view of the stick. Just a stick.

Now I shovel harder and faster. Again, almost like a voice, the stick calls again and again trying to steal my gaze.

"Hey over here, a worm!"

"Yohoo, here I am, a snake!"

"Come on, looky, looky, looky..."

I refuse to glance over. I know there is only a stick to be seen, there, just off to my far left.

Damn, I had look anyway.

Now the stick laughs at me. The more I try not to look, the more it laughs. Finally I can't bare it anymore and stamp over, pick up the stick, and fling it as far as I can, its laugh fading with distance.

Back to my duty, but before I can move even one spade full of dirt, a large ant scampers over the dirt where the stick had been. How odd, I think to myself, I must have disturbed a nest of ants that had been there the whole time. Their motion is what was catching the corner of my eye.

I turn to get a closer look at the... rock. Just a rock.