Wormology
A short one: in the early years of his marriage to Inez, John freed an earthworm trapped and fattened inside a rotted board over their outdoor grease trap, and found himself moved by its reaction to being cut loose.
In the first years of our married life, Inez and I had no indoor plumbing except for a kitchen sink with a discharge pipe into a grease trap which was nothing more than a 25-gallon barrel covered with a two-foot square of one inch boards. The barrel had an outlet into a rocked up cesspool. It was necessary, every two or three months, to uncover the grease trap and clean it or the accumulated grease and scum would clog the outlet pipe.
I scraped soil from the top of the cover, pried up the boards and found an earthworm of considerable size dangling on either side of one partially rotted board. Apparently, as a very small worm, it had worked its way through a nail hole as it feasted on the rich earth and fattened to where it could go neither forward or backward.
I couldn't deny life to it. After all, it had existed for several weeks trapped in that board and deserved to see new territory where a Robin or other feathered creature could make use of it.
I have read or heard that earthworms have no central nervous system and experience no emotions, pain, or comfort, but when I split that board with a chisel at the nail hole and the worm experienced freedom, it coiled all over itself and seemed tremendously glad to be reunited with its other half. I take my rewards where I can get them. I watched that worm until it burrowed its whole self from sight.