C. Meton

The Gardener and the Worm

One day, a gardener was digging in his yard. He had chopped down a tree and now he was digging around the stump to remove a large root that was growing along the surface of the soil.  He dug and he dug until he removed the dirt all around the root and then he chopped the root so that he could remove it.  After he got the biggest part of the root out, he continued to dig nearer the stump to remove another part.

As he dug, he noticed a large earthworm that had been in the soil close to the root. I must not harm this worm, he thought, since it is good for the soil and I do not wish to cause harm to any creature.  He used his shovel carefully so that he could remove more dirt, trying to scoop up the worm with the dirt so that he could put the worm in the dirt pile where it would be safe.  With each scoop of the shovel, the worm would slide off the shovel and back into the hole where he was digging.  He tried carefully, but after several attempts, the worm was still in the hole.  Then, when he had to step on the shovel to dig through a hard part of the soil, the shovel slipped and injured the worm.

Alas, he had failed!  He had not intended to hurt the worm, but he could not successfully remove the worm from the hole.  He felt badly that he had hurt the worm, but he also felt frustrated because the worm kept falling off the shovel each time he had tried to remove it from the hole.  I'm sorry, he thought to the worm, I truly did not want to hurt you, but my project is to remove the root and you kept getting in the way.  I guess my priority was more to accomplish my task than to protect you but I still wish that you had not been injured.

Perhaps there is some moral lesson to be learned from this, the gardener thought. He pondered for a while. "Nah," he said as he put away his tools.