Of course I spoke too hastily in my last blog entry. I made it sound like putting a worm on a hook was the grossest thing one could do. I disproved that theory on Saturday.

On that fine day Daisy and I went down to the dock again for some fishing. Although I had completely destroyed the ability of her fishing rod to successfully retract fishing line, I "fixed" that problem by jamming up the reel so that it couldn't release the fishing line either. At that point her "fishing rod" really was functionally just a stick from which we hung a line with a baited hook. I saw Grandpa successfully catch fish that way during the previous outing, so I figured we'd give it a shot.

We did actually get a few nibbles, and successfully pulled one tiny fish all the way out of the lake (whom we then threw back into the water, perforated jaw and all). After about 30 minutes of this game, Daisy was done. She handed me her rod. It still contained the last worm I had put on it, and he was still wriggling around despite the vigorous stabbing and drowning that had been inflicted upon him.

"Let's go swimming instead!" she exclaimed.

(Incidentally, I know I use a lot of exclamation marks when I quote Daisy, but that's just the way she talks)

"Ok, but if we're going to put away your fishing rod, we should probably remove the worm from it." I explained.

"Alrighty!" and with that, she marched into the house to put on her bathing suit, leaving me along with John Q. Worm.

On this particular afternoon, Daisy had been using a triple hook. When I baited the hook, I impaled John Q. on each of the three pointy ends, to reduce the chance that he'd get away. In fact, just the opposite had occurred. In all his watery wriggling, he had essentially wrapped himself more tightly around the hook structure. He had basically tied himself into a worm knot, a gooey, innard-leaking, squirming knot.

Do you know how to untie knots? Sure, you do. You grasp them VERY firmly. You use your fingernails to separate the strands. You push one end through another. You perform all sorts of actions that essentially just pulverize a living worm, like my friend, John Q. Let's just say that he was all done wriggling by the time I had "freed" him.

And THAT is why the one thing worse that putting a worm on a hook, is getting that worm back off the hook.