Worms are animals too!

This afternoon the weather was quite mild. So we spent the evening working and playing in the back yard. I started digging up an area of the back yard in preparation for our vegetable garden. Liam was having great fun hunting for all the worms that I uncovered. He was very interested in watching them move and wiggle in his hands. He also gave them rides in his toy wagon. After a while, his made the announcement "worms are animals". Sean and I were quite impressed by his observation and asked him why. He said "because they move". How astute! Of course, realizing that they were alive was not quite enough to stop him from "pulling apart" a huge night-crawler that I gave him from our compost. I felt a little guilty that he killed that worm. :( But I'm afraid that I'm guilty of killing far more worms, since digging is my profession as an archaeologist...Let's just hope that god isn't an earthworm ;). In the picture, Liam is posing with his worms and saying "cheese" - that's not a grimace.