“Located in central PA and can’t figure out what this worm is I just found on my floor,” says this reader in her one-line submission. The worm in question appears to be a yellowish color, with a segmented, semi-transparent body and dark-brown stripes running down its sides.

‘My grandchildren and I found a tiger swallowtail caterpillar in Wilson, NC” says this reader in her submission to us. As we can see in the photo below, this caterpillar is an olive green color, with speckles of light green and white adorning its body, and it has a large head with two eye spots with a black stripe underneath.

A 1/2-inch worm was found in a glass of water by this man in Albuquerque, NM. From the excellent images sent in, we can see that the worm in question is of a grayish/tan color, is segmented, has six forelegs, eight back legs, and a bulbous black head.

We think the worms our reader has discovered in her home are probably earthworms. If our reader is concerned about her son’s health or worried that the worm she found in his bed came from him, then we recommend that she take him to the doctor immediately.

Our reader has sent us a photo of what she describes as tiny worms. The photo unfortunately doesn’t provide enough…

Summary: Do the stripes of woolly worms stripes predict the length or severity of winter? It’s a long standing folk…

A reader wrote to us a little while ago about a small brown worm that she found in her house. She said she “could find this worm under my bed sheets and floor,” and we aren’t sure is we should take this as an expression of the mere possibility that the worm could be found on the bed sheets and floor, as her use of the subjunctive mood seems to suggest, or if the reader did in fact find the worm under her bed sheets and then on the floor. In any case, she sent a picture of the “worm” in question, which actually looks like a larva, not a worm. More specifically, she appears to have found a carpet beetle larva, which the gods have fated us to write about without end. Below we explain why we think our reader found a carpet beetle larva.

A reader wrote to us recently about some tiny brown worms that “came from behind the ceiling.” The brown worms, which are only about three millimeters long, fell onto her bed, which is why the reader speculates they came from the ceiling. It is unclear how many worms she has found, but “2 or 3 worms at a time” landed on her bed, so evidently this has happened multiple times. It is as if her ceiling has a worm leak, although this is perhaps an indelicate way to put the matter since the reader is quite concerned about the creatures. Indeed, she hasn’t slept in her bed in almost a week because of the ceiling worms. The reader asked us if we can help her with “this” (she didn’t specify any precise questions), so we’ll try our best to figure out what she found and identify ways to address the problem.

A few days ago we received a question from a reader who found what appears to be some kind of small, skinny, brown worm on his floor, or what looks like his floor. The reader didn’t give us much (or really any) information about the worm, but he did send a picture. The reader is wondering what the little brown worm is, and he is also wondering how he can get rid of “them” (implying that the pictured worm isn’t the only one he found).

A reader wrote to us recently about some blackish, brownish worms with round heads that he found at the base of his toilet a couple of weeks after the toilet flooded. The reader indicated that the worms’ bodies were segmented, and also that they have antennae. Perhaps because he found them around his toilet, the reader was wondering if he had found moth fly larvae. So, did our reader find moth fly larvae, or might the blackish, brownish worms at the base of the toilet be something else?

A reader in Indiana recently sent us a question about an extremely tiny, skinny brown worm that her neighbor found in her carpet. (That is, the small worm was found in the carpet of our reader’s neighbor’s house, and our reader is evidently writing to us on her neighbor’s behalf.) The reader described what she found as a “worm like thing,” so it isn’t clear if we are in fact dealing with tiny brown worm in the carpet at all, although she did say it looks a bit like a horsehair worm. What kind of tiny, skinny brown worms can be found in the carpet, or is our reader’s neighbor not dealing with a worm at all?

A while ago a reader wrote to us about some brown and black worms she is finding all over her apartment, including on her tile floor and the rug in her bedroom, as well as on the walls of her house. When they die, the worms “curl into a circle.” The reader refers to the worms in quotes, indicating that she is using the term loosely, and we think she is right in doing this, as it seems she is finding millipedes. However, the reader anticipated this suggestion, and said that she thinks the creatures she is finding are too skinny to be millipedes. So, below we explore our reader’s situation in more depth, trying to decipher if she found millipedes or something else.

A reader wrote to us the other day via the All About Worms Facebook page about some brown striped worms (or potentially larvae) he found in some store-bought chicken. We aren’t sure what kind of chicken he bought – rotisserie, a container of several pieces, etc. – but we know it was cooked and ready to eat. He had already eaten some of the chicken before he noticed the worms, and therefore was concerned that he had accidentally eaten some of them. The reader was therefore keen to identify the worms (or larvae) he found in his chicken, and that’s where we come in.

A reader wrote to us about a brown worm on his patio that was crawling toward a leaky water pipe. The reader was quite taken by the worm, and said “it was amazing!” The worm is about four inches (10 centimeters) long, and it had “titticles that parted.” While we find the word “titticles” to be excellent, not least because of is sexually confused connotations, we presume our reader meant tentacles. What could this brown worm with tentacles on the patio have been?

A reader recently sent us a photo of a short, fat brown worm via the All About Worms Facebook page. He asked one simple question: “what kind of worm is this?” Given some of the complex and convoluted questions we receive, we welcomed this beautifully straightforward message. We are tasked with one question – what is the short, fat brown worm that our reader found? – and were sent an excellent photo of the worm under consideration, making our job as easy as it could be.

We received an email a while back from a reader who is finding brown worms under her couch. The reader described the worms as brown and hard, and also mentioned that they have many legs. The reader asked several questions, but she was primarily concerned with determining what the worms are (hint: they aren’t worms, but larvae), and she was also keen to get rid of them. She was so alarmed by the presence of the brown, hard creatures under her couch, in fact, that she is considering getting new carpet and furniture, and ended her email with an emphatic cry for help. So, what are the brown worms (or actually larvae) under the furniture, and how can she get rid of them?

A reader wrote to us the other day about “little worms all over [her] laundry room,” which is near a closet that holds the trash. The small, brown worms are “all over the walls, the floor, the trash/closet, washer/dryer, even hanging from the ceiling from single thread webs.” However, they are only in this one area of the house, so apparently the worms originated in this area and haven’t spread. The reader is wondering what the brown worms are, why they are in her house, and how to get rid of them.

In a fairly long email composed of short, descriptive sentences that were each on their own line, which made the message look like a poem, we were asked about the long, skinny, brown worms that come out after it rains. The reader noted several things about the worms, most notably that they are, once more, long, skinny, and brown, and also that the worms dry out on the sidewalk after the rain evaporates. So, we have a basic “what are the worms that come out after its rain” sort of question, which we have addressed in different contexts a couple of times before. The answer to the reader’s precise question is extremely simple – the long, skinny, brown worms are almost certainly just earthworms – but her email suggests other dimensions of interest, so we’ll discuss why earthworms come out after it rains, and why they often end up dead on the sidewalk when the precipitation and its aftermath have passed.

We received a question a while ago from a reader about brown worms that turn into beetles. She is finding the brown worms all over her home, particularly in dark places (like under furniture), and she is concerned because she has three children. We are basically certain our reader found carpet beetle larvae, which means the brown worms under her furniture are not in fact worms, but rather a type of insect larvae. First we will explain why we believe the brown “worms” are carpet beetle larvae, and then we will move on to the more pressing question of how to get rid of carpet beetle larvae.

A reader recently wrote to us about, as the title of this article suggests, a small, brown worm with stripes on the counter. (The worm was on the bathroom counter, more precisely.) The reader sent pictures of the brown striped worm and was merely wondering what it is. She was very matter of fact in her email, not seeming particularly alarmed by the small worm, nor did she ask how to get rid of it, so we presume she is dealing with an isolated incident and not a recurring problem. (She did add the word “blah” after her short email, so she wasn’t altogether happy with finding the worm either.) So, we have a simple question before us: what is the small, brown, striped worm on the bathroom counter that our reader is finding.