The lambton worm

chapter 1

I can’t tell you who my parents were, what they looked like or what type of creatures they were. I never met them. My mother laid my egg carefully in some leaves beside the river. There may have been others, but I was the only one to survive. I was very tiny when I was young, probably only about and inch long. Unlike the fish in the river and most of the land creatures that I saw, I did not have limbs. I was the shape of a wiggly garden worm, but smaller. However, I did not have the soft body of a worm. I didn’t have fur like a mammal. I had scales, but they were not like the scales of a fish, they were tougher, more like a reptile, the fish told me. You might think I sound like a snake, well, I’m not! I do not have a forked tongue that I have to stick out to taste the air every few seconds. I do not have a beak either. I have a tongue that is not overly long and I have tiny buds of teeth starting to grow inside.
I can swim in the water easily by wiggling my tail. I can dart about and change direction to avoid predators. However, I cannot stay underwater as long as the fish can. I have to come to the surface to breathe.
My skin is a non-descript khaki colour. I’m darker along my back than I am along my front - a camouflage to protect me when I’m in the water, I think.
I spend the majority of my time in the water. I have wriggled out onto the land, but it takes me an hour to wriggle only a short distance and leaves me exhausted! Underwater, I can swim for miles easily, especially when the river current assists me.
The fish in the river have educated me. They tell me that I live in the river Wear. The river flows out into the cold, shallow waters of the North Sea. There is a human town at the mouth of the river known as Sunderland.
The river near the mouth, is very deep and wide. The part of the river where I live is about ten miles inland from there. Here the river can’t decide which direction to run in. It meanders this way and that, creating shallows where the silt builds up and deep parts where the current is at it’s strongest.
I followed the salmon upstream once. The river continued to meander back and forth, passed the human town of Chester-le-Street to the stone castle and cathedral at the city of Durham.
It was quieter on the river where I lived, it being part of a private estate that belonged to the Lambton family.