Invasive Species

It's raining, and soon my suburban sidewalks will be covered with worms. They may have been carried there by rising water or crawled there to escape drowning.

When the sun comes out, they will be stranded, unable to find their way the few inches to the grass-covered soil that would save them. They will shrivel and die where they are.

I used to rescue worms after a storm. It made me feel extra-good about myself to pick up their squishy, squiggling bodies and put them back onto the nearest lawn. Then my niece, an ecologist, explained that they were an invasive species, and didn't deserve my kindness. Uninvited, they had become ubiquitous. Now I step over them.

When the sun comes out, the trees in my backyard will grow a little bit, stretch their roots and branches wider. They will consider forming seeds to reproduce themselves.

We bought this house partly because of the "woods" in the backyard that screen us from our neighbors. It took several years for me to realize that it was buckthorn, also an invasive species, that granted our privacy. I began tearing the young ones from the ground and bought a weed wrench for the bigger ones. The huge ones, resembling trees, had to be left for my husband and his chain saw. But it was a battle we couldn't win.  Now I ignore them.

I have read the news every day for decades. As Chinese earthquakes and Indonesian tsunamis swept the world, I used to comfort myself with the idea that distance equals difference. Because those people were from another place, they must be affected by tragedy differently than I would be.

Then I began to work with immigrants, and I had to face the truth. Distance is meaningless. There is no difference. They are not an invasive species. We uproot them or leave them to struggle at our peril, because they are us.