Here I am about to descend into the dumpster. I have a look of pain upon my face. That is because I am sad for Clyde. I am afraid I won t find him in

Transcription

1 by Teacher Tammy

2 Here I am about to descend into the dumpster. I have a look of pain upon my face. That is because I am sad for Clyde. I am afraid I won t find him in the dumpster after all and that I will have to spend another sleepless night worrying about him.

3 Clyde s my friend. Not only that, but he has important work to take care of around the property. It is basically his turf, so to speak, when it comes to enriching the soil. Beyond that he actually ADDS to the soil, in ways that are beyond what you or I could do. This is one reason why it was so shocking to me that Clyde ended up in the Sabbath School dumpster for a whole afternoon and a night recently. I could hardly sleep that whole night for worrying about him there in that cold, harsh, metallic environment when he is so used to sleeping in soft soil. The next day, Sunday, I enlisted the help of my sister, and I went in after Clyde. I put on my work coveralls that I wear when I have serious work to do. I wore my pink gloves with nitrile palms in case there was serious trash in that dumpster. I was prepared to dive into that trash, if necessary, to find Clyde.

4 Notice that no one is supposed to trespass with regard to this dumpster. I am sorry that this part of the picture shows that sign, because I do not like to break the rules. Even worse, however, I do not like my friends to be put into dumpsters and have to live (or die) there because they have no way out. Do not ever play inside a dumpster. The truck will come and compact you, which is why I wanted to save Clyde. Earthworms might not survive compacting, even if they can sometimes survive being cut in two.

5 I set my green stool down next to the dumpster. I climbed up to the top of my green stool. I put one leg into the dumpster. I looked down into the dumpster. There was a lot of rust in that dumpster. There was a big plastic trashbag full of trash. I was glad it had not burst when someone put it into the dumpster. There was a big brown piece of paper in the dumpster. And there was a big pile of dirt. I was lucky that there was not more trash in the dumpster. I was also lucky that the trash in the dumpster was not smooshy and smeary and slippery. The big pile of dirt was what I was after mostly, because it was under that dirt I hoped to find my little pink friend, Clyde. I told my sister to take my picture because it might be the last chance she d get to see me diving into a dumpster. It is always good to record historic moments like that.

6 It is not fun inside a dumpster. There is not much room to turn around. It smells bad. I would not do this except for a friend.

7 I bent down to see what I could see. The big pile of dirt was cold and still. Perhaps it was too late for Clyde after all. Scooping up handsful of dirt, I put them into a cardboard box that happened to be inside the dumpster. There were little bugs of this and that description in the dirt, but no Clyde showed up. Again I scooped up dirt. Still no Clyde. This was getting serious. Clyde was a thin little fellow. What he do in a cold metal dumpster all night? He had been tossed in there as if he were a clod of dirt, with no regard for his pain endings or his feelings. It had happened right in the middle of the Sabbath School. I had taken a pail of dirt to use in the program. As I had smoothed out the dirt to make a little road, I noticed that Clyde had hitched a ride. No problem, I had thought. As soon as this Sabbath School is over, I will take him right home.

8 What have I found? Is there any hope for little pink Clyde?

9 But then during the program the children started noticing the bugs in the dirt. Then they noticed Clyde. They were terribly interested in Clyde and the bugs. They wanted to talk about the bugs. They wanted to play with the bugs instead of doing Sabbath School. Two daddies finally said they d take the dirt outside so the children could concentrate. Outside was fine, but outside in the dumpster was not. We had not communicated properly; that was plain. Once Sabbath School and church were over, I went outside to pick up Clyde. Clyde was nowhere to be seen. The dirt was nowhere to be seen. I saw the dumpster right there in front of the Sabbath School wing. Uh-oh, I said. I think there s trouble. So now I was diving in the dumpster, looking for trouble I mean for Clyde.

10 There s not much to Clyde. It s been a hard experience for him, and he s even flatter than usual. I doubt he s had a bite to eat all day, what with worrying about how to get out of this cold metal bin.

11 Finally I found little Clyde in the coldest, darkest corner of the dumpster. Just as I scooped up the last little bit of dirt, there he was, cold and flat. I almost missed seeing him, but the pinkness of his body stood out against the rust of the bottom of the dumpster. I stood up and held Clyde s little twisted body toward the sunlight. Slowly he turned his small face toward the sun. It almost seemed as if a hopeful look crossed his face. How did I know that a hopeful look crossed Clyde s face? I am good at something called anthropomorphizing, that is how I know. What is anthropomorphizing? It is thinking about animals as if they thought and felt a bit like humans do. Do animals really think and feel the same as humans? No, they do not. So little Clyde was rescued from the dumpster at last.

12 No, you can t see Clyde, and he can t see you. But his work on this soil has made it extremely rich.

13 Little pink Clyde came home from his dumpster debacle. Little Clyde was carefully dumped, with his personal dirt, into the hole under the compost barrel. There he quickly found shelter under a friendly leaf. Why should anybody care whether Clyde came home or not? Well, I care. I like soil, and I like earthworms. Clyde is an earthworm, and Clyde makes more soil. How does Clyde do that? Clyde eats dirt, and then he excretes even better dirt than he eats. Clyde can eat his whole body s weight worth of dirt in one day. Clyde also makes little holes in the soil. That helps plants to put down roots and allow rainwater to soak in deeply. Clyde is a fine worker. Some have called him God s little plough. That is British English for plow. I call him pink Clyde, and I like him that way.