Green worm

We finally decided to take a rest during our long visit to the gardens in the yards of the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo - the "empty center" as locals call it. We sat down on a bench under the shade of a few big ginkgos. Our attention turned towards a green worm which was slowly making its way on the ground. The worm followed that distinctive procedure worms follow, contracting and stretching its body in succession to progress, its soft cylindrical body bulging in the middle in every move. We were tired, sweaty, and thirsty, there was nothing better to do than watch the slow motion of that green worm. As we watched a Japanese sparrow dropped by a few meters away. We immediately thought that was the end of the worm. The bird had not seen it yet and instead of disposing of the worm then and there it started to move about in little jumps while searching for edible stuff. The green worm had suddenly stopped crawling, a fact we wrongly attributed to its having seen the bird - a terror-paralysed worm - but shortly after it resumed its accordion-like movement,  heading straight for its own grave. Presently the sparrow finally saw the little creeping animal. What a moment earlier was a living creature laid now flat dead inside a bird's beak. The entropy of the Universe, as a whole, had increased, if only infinitesimally. M tried to take a picture of this natural-selection instant but an approaching police car made the predator fly out fast, spoiling the try. The park guard on the right seat smiled to us and waved us goodbye. We both smiled and waved back. Soon after that we carried on with our stroll discussing the scene we had just witnessed. I felt a bit sorry for the little worm, my feeling rising a notch when M, matter-of-factly, pointed out we could have easily altered the outcome.