It’s that time of year when Ithaca has to mediate between two opposing and equally urgent needs. On the one hand: it’s springtime, which means that Ithaca is feeling an even stronger tug than usual to open up the skies and unleash a torrent of rain, hail, fog and sleet upon its all-too-suspecting residents. On the other hand: Cornell Days. Ithaca’s meteorological organs spent each night preparing to whip out the sooty cumulonimbi, and then Ithaca would realize, Hey! There are still prefrosh here. Don’t want to scare off the prefrosh.

The evil subterfuge of the trustees’ weather machine aside, spring is here in Ithaca, which means that sooner or later we all will face an onslaught, a veritable smorgasbord of the precipitation we merely sampled last week. The continuous downpour isn’t all bad: it will return Beebe Falls to its usual violent glory, it will finally clean all the salt off our shoes, and, of course, it will help nurture all the wonderful greenery that unites the disparate architecture of the Cornell campus. April showers bring May flowers, after all.

However, April showers also bring something else, something insidious, something stealthy and perfidious, something that even Thesaurus.com cannot help me describe adequately. You may not even notice them at first, but then you look down and realize their guts are all over the bottom of your shoes:

Prefrosh.

No, just kidding. I am, of course, talking about worms. Every time it rains at Cornell, the sidewalks come to life with the wriggling bodies of hundreds of worms. There are little, skinny worms that coil up like dropped strands of spaghetti, and big, thick worms that at first glance look like fallen branches. They cover the concrete in such huge numbers that, after a certain point (the Worm Event Horizon), it’s impossible to take a step without feeling that telltale juicy loss of traction.

As if this weren’t disgusting enough, the next morning the sidewalk is freshly coated with the remains of a grisly worm exodus. Innumerable worm carcasses lay strewn about, some flattened by the treads of undergrads, some white and bloated with rainwater. There are few sights more depressing while hiking up the Slope to a 9 a.m. class. I was so moved by the carnage, in fact, that I wrote a haiku:

There on the sidewalk
a bunch of worms are wriggling
waiting to be squished.

All I can do is ask why, why do these worms squirm their way to certain death? The most popular explanation is that if worms stay underground while it rains, they’ll drown. Balderdash, I say — worms have no lungs, and they absorb air through their skin. After conducting exhaustive research (searching the online archives of The Straight Dope), it’s apparent that worms crawl out onto the sidewalk in the rain for one, and only one, reason: because they can. Since they breathe through their skin, they need constant moisture to avoid drying out; the only time they can leave their wet earthen dwellings is when the sidewalks are slick with water. And they need to surface in order to mate. That’s right: our clumsy footsteps are interrupting worm copulation.

It’s clear that something has to be done about this problem. Hundreds of thousands of worms are stepped on every Spring. Innocent worm lives are being taken, while they are engaged in the most intimate of worm activities! And, more importantly, I just bought these sneakers! But what can we, mere college students, do? I have outlined a few possible solutions here, along with their pros and cons:

Erect worm fences. Since worms lack arms, legs, and central nervous systems, a simple one-inch-high wall along both sides of every paved path should prove an insurmountable barrier between them and our hurried passage to class. Pro: Keeps worms from getting on the path in the first place. Helps keep really dumb people from wandering off into the wilderness. Con: Installation would be labor-intensive and somewhat expensive. Fences would interfere with wintertime sledding.

Equip all students with aerating shoes. If everyone wore those sneakers with the huge spikes coming out of the soles, worms would be punctured rather than flattened. And, as everyone knows, even if you cut a worm in two it survives. Pro: Good for the grass. We’d all look taller. Con: Sidewalks would be covered in holey worms. Stepping on someone’s toes would suddenly become much more dangerous.

Invent worm plows. If we can clear the snow off of the ground as soon as it starts falling, we must have the ability to do the same with worms. Just scrape the squirmy little buggers off the sidewalks, back to whence they came. Pro: Technology solves all our problems. Con: Would probably take more lives than it saves; worm-plowing requires careful calibration.

Create designated worm crossings. Every 20 meters or so, paint a strip of diagonal hatches on the ground and post a tiny diamond-shaped yellow sign with a squiggly black line on it and the letters “XING.” People can simply step over the stream of law-abiding worms. Pro: Tiny little signs would be gosh darn adorable. Con: Wouldn’t work at all.

I believe it’s only a matter of time before one of these methods is adopted to protect Ithaca’s worm community. In the meantime, we must try to avoid stepping on our segmented brethren, thereby preserving a vital part of our ecosystem. And remember: just because worms don’t have brains, it doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings.

Actually, it probably does.