We will begin by stating the obvious fact that it is not at all uncommon to find worms in your garden. Indeed, one sign of a healthy garden is the number of worms within its soil. Moreover, worms are very good for your garden, as they dig tunnels through the soil, which allows air and moisture to more easily travel through it. Worms also excrete waste, called castings or vermicompost, in the gardens in which they live, and these castings are excellent for your soil. Worm castings facilitate plant growth and help plants stay healthy, making them less susceptible to diseases and pests. Worm castings are basically plant vitamins. So, before you go on a mission to eliminate worms from your garden, remember the enormous amount of good they do for your plants. Of course, if the worms are eating your plants, this is a problem, and pointing out the benefits of worms will probably not provide much solace to our reader.

What type of worm might you find in your garden? Frequently, you will find nightcrawlers, which tend to be rather long – up to 8-10 inches (or 20-25 centimeters), in fact. Of course, not all nightcrawlers are this long, and they could certainly be in the length range described by our reader. Nightcrawlers can also be black and fat, giving them the appearance of being “healthy,” to use our reader’s word. (Their plumpness is one reason they are commonly used for fish bait.) There is a type of nightcrawler called Eisenia hortensis that just about meets our reader’s description of the worms she found perfectly, except, not surprisingly, these nightcrawlers do not have gold lettering on their backs that look like Chinese characters (or the characters of any other Asian language, for that matter). Based on most of the description supplied by our reader, it does seem like she is dealing with some type of earthworm, but we simply do not know of any worms with gold Asian characters on their backs.

There is also the matter of the worms eating the reader’s flowers, and this also perplexes us. Earthworms simply don’t eat the plants in your garden, which leads us to speculate that our reader might be dealing with some type of caterpillar. Caterpillars do eat plants, including flowers, and they are often multicolored, meaning that designs resembling gold Asian characters might be found on their bodies. We don’t know of any off the top of our heads, and we weren’t able to find any in our search for an answer, but it is possible.

So, unfortunately, we must end were be began: with uncertainty. Half of the reader’s description of the creatures she found (that they are black, fat, and healthy) seems to fit the appearance of a nightcrawler, but the other half – the part about them eating her flowers and having a strange design on their backs – better matches the description of some type of caterpillar. You might find either creature in your garden, to further complicate matters. Maybe our reader is misattributing the damage done to her flowers to nightcrawlers, nightcrawlers that happen to have a strange pattern on their back, and her plants are actually being consumed by some other creature? Alas, we simply don’t know.

But we invite this reader – or any other similarly situated reader – to submit a picture of this beast, and with that we can probably be of more precise assistance.

Before we even begin to attempt to grasp at any sort of answer to this question, we have to emphasize the details that are missing. Where was this worm found? On land or in water, and in what part of the world? We’re proud to have an international reader base, so we have no idea from where our reader is writing. The question is obviously in English, but English is a global language. Also, how big is this worm? Is it the same size as a goldfish (and what kind of goldfish), or does it merely look like one, meaning it could theoretically be any size at all?

This is one of the few questions we have been asked that we basically have zero clue what our reader found. But because we are so dedicated to answering the worm-related questions we receive, here we go… Having read the Lord of the Rings trilogy many years ago, we know that there is a “race” of dragons known as “worms.” One dragon of this race is Glaurung, who is sometimes called Glaurung the Golden, suggesting that this dragon was gold or perhaps yellow. (If you think we have a freakishly prodigious memory for details, we don’t – we’re getting this information from the online Encyclopedia of Arda, a place where serious Tolkien enthusiasts talk about the minutia of his works, although we do vaguely recall the dragon Glaurung.) So, we at least know of one “worm” that is gold in color. The fact that we have brought up this information is a pretty good indication of how lost we are with respect to our reader’s particular question.

On a more serious (which is to say biological) note, we did dig up some information on a worm that goes by the curious name “fat innkeeper worm.” Found in mudflats, these worms can be somewhat tan in color (and in fact we saw a picture of one of these creatures that is a kind of a brown-orangeish hue – goldfish can be orange!). They burrow into muddy sand, making tunnels in which other fat innkeeper worms, along with some other creatures, like pea crabs, often live (hence the “innkeeper” part of the name, presumably). There are also some fish that (roughly) look like worms, like the bay pipefish, which is long and skinny and green, making it resemble one of the blades of eelgrass through which they often swim. Neither of these would likely be described as a “worm that looks like a goldfish,” but hey, at least we’re trying.

To conclude, we do not know what our reader found. It sounds like a very interesting creature, and we wish we could provide some more definitive information, but, alas, we cannot. It worth mentioning that it is eminently possible that our reader didn’t find a worm at all, as has been implied. This is something to keep in mind as he continues to puzzle over his find.

This is a perplexing question, and no creatures in particular come to mind on the basis of our reader’s description. We are fairly sure that our reader is right in assuming that he didn’t find snakes. For one, the creatures he found would be very small for snakes (although small snakes do exist), and in any case snakes definitely have heads that are noticeable. Skinks can look like snakes, and their heads can be hard to see depending on the angle from which you observe them. However, skinks very often look more like lizards than snakes (because they are lizards), so we think it is unlikely that our reader saw a skink. We also don’t think he came across any worm, even though he found these creatures digging around in the soil of his garden (a very likely place to find a worm). The most likely type of worm one finds in his garden is an earthworm, and earthworms do not match the reader’s description of the creature he found at all.

This leaves three additional possibilities: caterpillars, centipedes, and millipedes. Caterpillars are known for their colorful appearance, which is why we threw these creatures into the mix. For example, the caterpillars that grow into polyphemus moths are bright green with silver spots. We’re not suggesting this is what our reader saw, but it demonstrates just how wild the color schemes of caterpillars can be. However, caterpillars tend to be smaller than four to six inches in length, and only a few species burrow into the soil, so we don’t think our reader found a caterpillar. So, we’re left with centipedes and millipedes – could our reader have found one of these creatures?

In a word, possibly. First, the size of the creatures mentioned by our reader matches that of centipedes and millipedes fairly well. Certain species of both creatures can get quite long, so it wouldn’t be very unusual to find a centipede or millipede that is around a half of a foot long. Moreover, the movements of the creatures that our reader found (recall that he found them thrashing around) is consistent with them being centipedes or millipedes. The segmented bodies of centipedes and millipedes allow them to curve, and when they are being dug out of the soil (a place, by the way, that you might find either creature), they could definitely whip their bodies around in a panic. Finally, centipedes and millipedes can be sliver (an example of the latter is the silver-gray millipede found in the Amazon), although we are not familiar with any particular silver species of either creature that lives in Southern California. If our reader did find millipedes or centipedes, it’s somewhat strange that he didn’t mention the many legs that both of these creatures have. On the other hand, some species have tiny legs, ones that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to see immediately unless the creature was on its back.

For good or ill, that is far as we are willing to go in our speculation. Of the creatures that our reader might have found in his garden, it seems most likely that he found either millipedes or centipedes. Since both are extremely similar, we cannot say if it is more likely that our reader found a centipede or a millipede. Both match the reader’s description equally well. Hopefully this article at least narrows the possible candidates for our reader’s creature. We don’t know what he found, but we at least know a few creatures that he likely didn’t find.

First, we should point out that this black, gold, and white “worm” is probably not a worm at all. Rather, it is most likely a caterpillar because it is described as “furry.” Caterpillars, and not worms, have fine hairs or bristles on them, and these tiny hairs are probably responsible for the furry appearance of the creature that our reader referenced. Since caterpillars are often confused with worms, this is an understandable mistake on the part of our reader. It is so common, in fact, that we wrote an entire article about the difference between caterpillars and worms.

That said, what kind of caterpillar did our reader likely come across? In the absence of more information, such as the size of the caterpillar and the area of the world in which it was found, it is very hard to say. There are, after all, tons of different members of the order Lepidoptera, to which caterpillars belong. (More precisely, caterpillars are the larval form of the members in this order, which includes moths and butterflies.) At best, we can list a few candidates for what this caterpillar may be.

One of the more likely possibilities, given the abundance of the species, is that our reader came across the larval form of the Monarch butterfly, probably the most recognizable of all the butterflies of North America. The caterpillars that mature into Monarch butterflies have black, yellow, and white stripes that cover their entire bodies, including their heads. (Granted, our reader said the caterpillar was gold and not yellow, but obviously there is a fine line between these two colors.) They can reach a length of about two inches (about five centimeters), and on both ends of their bodies are a pair of black filaments, which basically look like strands of hair. Again, Monarch butterflies are very common, at least in North America, so it wouldn’t be at all unusual to see the caterpillar form of this type of butterfly.

There are any number of other caterpillars that are black, gold, and white – to pick one at random, the caterpillars that turn into Eastern Comma butterflies adhere to this color scheme – and it’s not particularly helpful, or feasible, to simply list every caterpillar that fits into this category. So, the general answer to our reader’s question is “it could be a lot of different caterpillars,” although we think the larval form of the Monarch butterfly is as good of a guess as any.

In any case, since black and gold feature prominently in the caterpillar’s phenotype, one thing we can say confidently is that the University of Colorado should consider adopting this species as their official caterpillar.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, we simply do not have enough information to answer this question with any degree of certainty. Indeed, we can hardly even hazard a guess, as we are lacking some crucial information about this creature. We need to know what part of the world it lives in, and we also need to know its main color. It has a red head and white puffs on its back, but what is the color(s) of its body? That said, we’ll do our best to address this reader’s question.

First, the reader almost certainly didn’t see a worm, but rather a caterpillar. This is a very common mistake; indeed, it is such a common mistake that we wrote an article about the difference between caterpillars and worms. The main reason we think that the reader found a caterpillar and a not a worm is that worms don’t have antennae, let alone large antennae, as is the case with the creature our reader found. Worms do have setae, which are essentially hair-like bristles that help some types of worms burrow, but these are quite different from antennae, and you likely wouldn’t confuse the two.

So the reader most likely encountered a caterpillar and not a worm, but what kind of caterpillar? Again, we are uncertain about this because of the missing information spelled out above, but we did find a caterpillar with the features described by our reader. It’s called the white-marked tussock moth caterpillar, and it is in fact quite beautiful. It has a red head and prominent white tufts (which might reasonably be described as “puffs,” to use our reader’s language) on its back. It also has a white stripes along its back and a large tail that has almost a goldish hue. These are common caterpillars, at least during the summer in eastern North America, where they are often seen, so if our reader happens to live in this part of the globe, we suppose there is a fairly good chance that the “worm” they saw is the white-marked tussock moth caterpillar. These caterpillars are also seen as far west as Texas, Alberta, and Colorado, so it is possible to see them in this part of the continent as well.

If our reader saw a different creature that doesn’t match the description of the white-marked tussock moth caterpillar, they should consider consulting theDiscover Life caterpillar identification guide.

Using this site, one can note the characteristics of a caterpillar they find and a list of possible matches is generated. Very cool!

First, let’s take a look at the picture the reader submitted along with her question:

Even though this reader gave us all the information she possibly could, including where the worms were found and their physical appearance, not to mention the picture above, we regrettably don’t have a definite response for her, in spite of our best efforts to locate an answer. Such is the nature of worm identification.

The only specific worm we were able to find that even partially resembles what the reader describes is called the eighteen-scaled worm (scientific name: Halosydna brevisetosa). Given the reader’s description of the worm as covered in shells, the eighteen-scaled worm has a promising name (scales on a worm might look like shells), and some (but certainly not all) pictures of this worm are somewhat similar to the reader’s description, but, frankly, we’re not very confident in this guess. However, these worms are commonly found in north Mexico, part of which is near the Texas coast line, and they also live in Marine environments, so there are a couple of parallels between the two. The eighteen-scaled worm and the mystery worm on the beach are also about the same size, but the similarities stop here.

While we didn’t find any other specific worms to mention, we should point out that tons of different worms live in or near the ocean (for some examples, see our article about marine worms). In fact, this is quite a natural place for worms to reside, as worms need to live in moist environments to survive. We bring up this rather obvious point only to say that the reader may have found common aquatic worms (something like, say, bristle worms, millions of which come to the surface of shallow waters in places like Florida once a year to mate) that were for some reason covered with what appeared to be shells (or if they weren’t shells, perhaps they were some sort of barnacle-like creatures that latched onto the worms?). In other words, the reader may not have found some exotic shell-covered worms, but just normal worms that were uniquely decorated, as it were.

So, our reader likely either came across eighteen-scaled worms, despite the limitations of this hypothesis, or else she found some other marine worms that managed to cover themselves (or be covered) by some shell-like adornments.

Not only can arrow worms, which also go by their more scientific name “chaetognaths,” live in both benthic and pelagic zones, they can also live in any marine waters. Arrow worms can live in tropical waters and polar regions, in shallow tide pools and at the bottom of the sea. Given how many places arrow worms can live, one might suspect that the phylum Chaetognatha is very diverse, like the phylum Nematoda with its estimated 1,000,000 species of worms. However, nearly the reverse is true, as the phylum Chaetognatha has around only 120 species of worms. There are, however, an enormous number of chaetognaths in terms of individuals. There is no shortage of arrow worms in the world, at least not yet.

Most arrow worms are transparent or translucent (although some that live in the deep sea, interestingly, are orange) and are covered by a cuticle, a flexible but tough covering of an organism. Their bodies are broken into three different sections, a head, a trunk, and a tail. On the head, there are a number of hooked spines that are used for hunting. (Arrow worms are carnivorous, feeding on other plankton.) The trunk has one or two fins, somewhat similar in appearance to the fins you might see on a fish. These fins give chaetognaths their dart-like appearance. The tail of arrow worms is used for movement, which is accomplished by a swift undulating body motion. The fin on the tail helps with propulsion while the body fins assist with steering and stabilization. Arrow worms are simple creatures with no respiratory or circulatory systems, and they tend to be rather small, ranging from 2 millimeters to 120 millimeters.

Every type of chaetognath is hermaphroditic, as they carry both sperm and eggs. To reproduce, immature sperm are released into a tail cavity to mature, whereupon they move through a short duct to be packaged into a spermatophore. During the mating process, these spermatophores, which each arrow worm has, are placed on the necks of their partners. The sperm break out of the spermatophore, then swim along the midline of the worm until they reach pores near the tail. The pores lead to oviducts, wherein developed eggs reside, and it is in this location that fertilization takes place. The eggs are released and hatch, releasing a smaller version of an adult arrow worm into the ocean.

Those are the basics about the phylum chaetognatha, and what better place to conclude than the birth of new arrow worms?

First, a little background on Catawba worms, which are in fact not worms at all. They are, like so many other “worms” we write about on this site, larva – more specifically, they are the larva of the sphinx moth, which makes them caterpillars. When they are hatching from the egg, the larvae are very pale, but in time they become yellow with a black strip down their backs and black dots on their sides. Before exiting the larval stage of their life cycle (that is, before they cease to be caterpillars and transition into adult moths), they can reach about two inches in length. It is at this stage in their lives that fishermen seek them with frenzied enthusiasm. (Seriously, they are highly coveted by fishermen.)

To some people, Catawba worms are regarded as a pest because catalpa trees have excellent wood that can be used for fine woodwork. So, in an epic clash of interests, a fisherman’s dream – a tree that almost literally grows fish bait – is a woodworker’s nightmare. Interestingly, though, Catawba worms only appear to defoliate catalpa trees (indeed, they can do this up to three times in a summer) without causing lasting damage to the tree itself. Maybe fishermen and wood craftsmen can live in harmony after all.

Now, about the matter of Catawba worms infesting trees other than catalpas. Fortunately for our reader, everything we have read suggests that Catawba worms exclusively feed on catalpa trees and nothing else. A wholesale producer of Catawba worms, which operates through the authoritative-sounding website CatawbaWorms.com, insists that Catawba worms can only be found on catalpa trees, and the worms will only infect some of them on a seasonal basis at that. Another source, who happens to have written a book about Catawba worms and catalpa trees (along with a now defunct newsletter on the same subject – talk about an enthusiast!), says the same, writing that “without Catalpa Trees, you will not have any Catalpa Worms” (capitalization his). Finally, every other source we read mentions catalpa trees, and only catalpa trees, as the source of sustenance for Catawba worms, so we’ll regard that as indirect corroboration. Of course, we can’t say with certainty whether Catawba worms will infest your Royal Empress tree, but nothing we have unearthed suggests that they will.

Unfortunately, these worms could be a number of different things, some of which aren’t even worms at all. Below we have listed a few possibilities:

To help describe the worms, the reader actually pointed to a previous article on All About Worms that describes small worms you might find in your bathroom, so let’s list these first, just in case these are in fact the creatures that our reader found. The first is the larvae of moth flies, which are often found around drains, including shower drains. Although often found in the area described by the reader, these larvae tend to be very small (less than a forth of an inch in length), and thus considerably smaller than the reader’s worms. Moth fly larvae also tend to be a dark grayish color, not red. The other “worms” covered in this article are carpet beetle larvae. These larvae can be found all over one’s house, including the shower. Again, though, carpet beetle larvae don’t precisely meet the description found in our reader’s question, as these larvae tend to be a brownish color with pale strips along their bodies.

While we’re on the topic of larvae, we should mention the midge fly larvae (often called “blood worms”), 2000 species of which can be found all over North America in aquatic settings. For the most part, people report seeing midge fly larvae in pools, but presumably they could be found in a shower, especially if there is stagnant water accumulated. Midge fly larvae are often red, but they don’t grow to over half an inch in length. So, alas, these larvae also don’t perfectly match the worms (or whatever the case may be) that our reader is confronting. However, given the prevalence of blood worms, they are definitely worth considering.

The reader should consider two additional possibilities: pinworms and horsehair worms. Pinworms afflict humans, causing irritation around the lower intestine and anus area, where they can be observed with the naked eye. During a shower, an infected person might be able to scrub a few of these pinworms off, which would explain why they are in the shower. Like all the other creatures described, though, pinworms are very small, usually under a half of an inch (they also tend to be white), but they are very thin. Horsehair worms, which infect certain types of insects and are found in water, are also extremely thin. However, these worms don’t match the reader’s description for the opposite reason that all the others don’t: they are often considerably longer than two inches; in fact, they can grow to be as long as a foot. Horsehair worms come in several different colors, ranging from an off-white to black.

Regrettably, all of the worms described above are imperfect matches to our reader’s question. On the other hand, all of the worms (and larvae) listed above seem to be the prime candidates, so we would encourage our reader to closely research each to see if one of them actually matches up with the worms that he is observing.

A reader wrote to us inquiring about the commercial prospects of selling worms that are formed in a milk jug that has been buried under ground for six months. In case you thought you misread that last sentence, here it is again: a reader wrote to us inquiring about the commercial prospects of selling worms that are formed in a milk jug that has been buried under ground for six months. The reader was evidently told that the worms that result from this utterly strange process are of “huge economic value when exported to foreign countries.” Because we’re unsure where the reader is writing from, we’re not sure what constitutes a foreign country, but even if we did know, we are pretty sure that the contents of a milk jug that has been underground for half of a year are going to worth precisely nothing. So this is our answer to the first of the reader’s question: no, we don’t think what you’ve been told is accurate. Why?

In a way, it’s absurd to explain why we think that extremely rancid milk, worm filled or otherwise, would be of value, let alone enormous value in foriegn markets. Why on earth would milk that has been sitting underground for six months be worth anything? Just the same, our reasoning is thus: milk produced in this day and age is pasteurized (unless you specifically hunt for unpasteurized milk). Because of the process of pasteurization (i.e., the heating of a liquid to a specific temperature for a specific amount of time), bacteria or other harmful microbes that are present in the milk should be killed. So, it is hard to see why milk (which is presumably pasteurized) buried under ground would yield any sort of creature, much less worms. Of course, pasteurization can be imperfect, meaning that some bacteria may survive the heating process; moreover, raw milk can contain parasites, so perhaps this is the origin of milk-worm rumor. But, not surprisingly, we know of no bacteria or parasite that would transform into a worm after six months (or any other amount of time, for that matter).

The only way that we can see how worms might emerge from a milk jug that has been buried for six months is if the jug isn’t sealed. If the jug wasn’t sealed, it’s possible that worms could get into it, and in truth this really isn’t all that unthinkable given that many worms live in the soil and need moisture to stay alive. What is unthinkable is that these worms were somehow created within milk, and it’s doubly unthinkable that these worms would be of tremendous monetary worth. Maybe the milk gives them some form of valuable nutrition that lets them grow into robust worms, making them good for, say, fishing, but, again, we have no idea why they would be worth a ton of money.

The reader’s other question – what are these worms? – has already been answered. These worms are either the stuff of fiction, or else regular worms (like earthworms) that got into the milk jug. In other words, there is no such thing as a milk worm in and of itself. In any event, we regret to inform our reader that he has almost certainly not stumbled across a get-rich-quick scheme (or rather, a get-rich-in-six-months scheme).