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.

Three possibilities come immediately to mind, and interestingly none of them are actually worms. We’ll begin with the most likely culprit, the larvae of the moth fly. We’ve written about the larvae of moth flies before (in fact, we’ve actually written about them in the context of finding them on the bathroom floor!), so we won’t go into too much detail. Moth fly larvae match the description that our reader sent us almost perfectly. They are a clear brownish color (if that sounds contradictory, think of muddy water), and they do have distinct dark lines that run horizontally across their bodies. These larvae often appear on bathroom floors and near sink drains, as they thrive in moist environments. (What about the one they found in the dirty laundry? It probably got there by latching onto a piece of clothing worn by someone using the bathroom.) Given all the details that align, it is very likely that our reader is dealing with moth fly larvae. So, how do you get rid of them?

The way to rid yourself of moth worm larvae is mostly preventative, although, of course, your first step should be to remove all the larvae you find. After this, it is best to focus on two things: moisture and organic debris. More to the point, you should focus on eliminating both from your house. Fix leaky faucets, open windows when you shower, and make sure to clean the muck that tends to accumulate around anything in your house that frequently comes in contact with water, like sink drains and the tops of drain pipes. Also, it is good to make sure that your windows and doors are properly sealed by using, say, screens. This will help keep moth flies out, and of course moth flies are the source of the moth fly larvae.

As we said, it is overwhelming likely that our reader is dealing with moth fly larvae, but for the sake of completeness, we’ll mention two additional possibilities, both of which are larvae. The first are carpet beetle larvae, which are also brownish color with stripes, although their stripes are pale. They are found not only in bathrooms, but also on walls, floors, and other areas of your house. They are best dealt with by thoroughly vacuuming the area in which you find them. It is also possible that our reader found maggots, the larvae of flies. Maggots thrive in unsanitary places around the house, like a bathroom floor that hasn’t been cleaned in awhile. To get rid of maggots, the best thing to do is remove the conditions that attracted the maggots to begin with – in other words, clean the maggot-ridden areas thoroughly.

So, the “worms” that our reader found are very likely one of the three larvae mentioned above. Follow the advice we presented above to help get rid of the problem.

This is an excellent question about an important topic (agricultural pests destroy enormous amounts of food every year), but first we need to address some basics, like, what exactly is a cucumber worm? Cucumber worms are actually the larva of the cucumber beetle, so cucumber worms are not species themselves, but are instead part of a beetle’s life cycle. Cucumber worms, which are white, tunnel their way into a variety of fruits and vegetables (cucumbers included), leaving their frass at the point of entry. Additional fruits and vegetables affected by cucumber worms include pumpkins, squash, watermelon, and cantaloupe. The adult form of cucumber worms – that is, cucumber beetles – also feed on plants, including corn, peas, and some kinds of beans.

How the life cycle of cucumber beetles unfolds is relevant to our reader’s question, so let’s move on to this topic. First, cucumber beetles, which, by the way, are also known as “striped cucumber beetles,” fly from their hibernating location to an area of crops early in the growing season. Since they come early in the season, the beetles attack plants that are not fully grown, eating away at their stems in a way that eventually kills the entire plant. So if our reader had more than one plant, and if some of those plants died young, cucumber beetles are probably to blame. However, the reader said that the cucumber worm he is dealing with infected the fruit of the plant, so clearly this plant wasn’t killed off by a cucumber beetle early in its life (because if it had been it never would have yielded fruit, a development that comes relatively late in most plants’ life cycles). Thus, the reader has a fully grown plant that is infected, and the question is whether this plant can be salvaged.

Unfortunately, the answer is probably “no.” First, it would be strange if the reader had picked out the only cucumber worm afflicting his plant. Cucumber worms could be in other fruits on the plant that the reader hasn’t even noticed. They aren’t exactly drilling huge holes in the fruits they are tunneling into, although in truth their mark is noticeable, so perhaps other fruits haven’t been infected. Still, where there are cucumber worms, there are likely cucumber beetles, and the beetles not only eat the fruit, but also other parts of the plant, like its leaves, vines, or whatever the case may be. Again, this is just to say that in identifying one infected fruit, one didn’t necessarily find all the parts of the plant that are infected. The plant could very well be infected in other parts, and if so its immune system will be compromised, which leads to the third and most important consideration: cucumber worms and beetles carry viruses – notably squash mosaic virus and cucumber mosaic virus – and these viruses can easily bring down an already weakened plant. What’s more, once a plant is infected, there is no way to control it.

Unfortunately, we have to say that our reader’s plant probably can’t be rescued. The plant might be infected with more cucumber worms and beetles, or it might have already taken on an uncontrollable virus, but in any event it is likely not worth hanging on to.

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.

First, why are we so certain the reader is in fact dealing with millipedes? For one, this is the reader’s suspicion, and who are we to question the person who is actually witnessing and dealing with the problem? And two, millipedes are often identified by their defining defense mechanism – curling up – which the reader explicitly mentions. So, we are fairly certain that our reader is dealing with millipedes, and we shall tailor our response accordingly.

The reader mentioned a water leak in his basement, but unfortunately this isn’t the only possible reason for the millipedes presence. (We say “unfortunately” because if the leak were the only thing to blame, the solution to the millipede problem would be simple: address the leak and the millipedes will be a threat to our reader’s basement no longer.) Millipedes don’t like extremes, so they’ll migrate to dryer places when overwhelmed with moisture, like during heavy rainfall, and they’ll move to moister, cooler places during droughts. The climate in which our reader finds himself is of course something only he can evaluate, but if perchance he lives in a dry area, or if the area in which he lives has been dry as of late, he should address the leak, and this will probably go a long way toward addressing the millipede issue. And even if the reader doesn’t live in a particularly dry place, millipedes prefer some moisture, so a damp basement would be an inviting place for millipedes.

Speaking of dampness, millipedes are often found in wet organic debris, like piles of moist leaves, so our reader should be sure to remove any such accumulations around the house. Unfortunately, millipedes don’t need an entire pile of wet debris to survive – they can get by on much less. This means that any moist soil, mulch, etc. around the house could attract millipedes. While some moisture in this area is unavoidable, it is important to make sure that one is not exacerbating the problem by, say, not having rain gutters, or by landscaping in such a way that funnels water toward the foundations of one’s house.

Even if our reader’s house is surrounded by moisture, though, he can still prevent a lot of creatures (including millipedes) from getting in his house if he seals openings around the basement. Caulking cracks and blocking drafts is key if you want to keep pests out of the house.

To sum, our reader should begin by removing the millipedes currently in the house (they breed quickly and lay lots of eggs, so they need to be gotten rid off lest another generation will be begotten). Next, eliminate the leak into the basement, and while you are at it evaluate if moisture is coming toward your house because of a design or landscaping issue. Finally, seal up any gaps to the outside world that may afford a pest entrance. The occasional millipede may find its way into the house, but performing the above should help to prevent any sort of millipede infestation.

First, we need to bring the situation into sharper focus. Although it’s not entirely clear from the reader’s description, it sounds as if the worms are living in the soil that is right by the bottom part of the walls of the house, as well as in the cracks of this same part of the walls. The soil by the walls is evidently moist, as the reader reports that the worms dry out and die when they leave this area. Currently, however, the worms appear to enjoy their location because they are staying near the walls and, alas, reproducing, exacerbating the problem.

Not surprisingly, the worms are rather small: about an inch long, according to the reader. We’re not sure what type of worm the reader is dealing with, but that’s not very important at the moment – the size it what counts. The smallness of the worms explains why they are able to easily get into the house. Larger worms have a lot more difficulty slipping in. How often do you find huge night crawlers squirming around your living room?

Searching for the appropriate solution to his problem, the reader mentioned two additional things. First, he can’t put anything on the ground, by which he presumably means that he can’t place anything on the ground surrounding his house, perhaps because of space limitations. Second, he asked about using some sort of spray to address the problem. However, we try to never recommend pesticides or other chemicals (although plenty of other places on the web will direct you to such products), so our proposed solution will steer clear of placing something on the ground and using any sort of spray.

What solution might that be? Unfortunately, it’s not very profound: seal up the cracks and other gaps in the walls of your house. If the foundation of your house is made of concrete, as foundations are wont to be, you could use any number of masonry-patching products, like hydraulic cement. However, as walls continue to shift in the ground over the course of a few years, the cracks will likely reappear, so a better solution is to use a type of epoxy sealer on the cracks, which is a lot more permanent solution for reasons that don’t concern us at present. You might also check the weep holes of your home. If you think the worms might be coming in this way, you can partially seal them with plastic mesh. (N.B.: Don’t use steal or copper mesh because either will oxidize and stain your house, and don’t completely seal your weep holes or you’ll have water-drainage issues.)

If you are able to seal your house, worms will not be able to get in (nor will other insects, for that matter). So, it won’t matter how much worm reproduction is going on outside the walls of your house because it will be going on outside the walls of your house, and they won’t be getting in afterward.

One final consideration for our reader: it may be worth investigating why the soil outside the walls of your house is moist while the soil further away is not. Might there be a drainage issue that is causing water to accumulate right by the walls of your house? If you can eliminate the moisture, this soil by and in the cracks of your walls will no longer serve as a good habitat for worms, and this may eliminate or at least greatly reduce the problem without having to seal tons of cracks in your walls (although you may want to do this anyway).

Maggots are the larval, or immature, stage of the common housefly. They are very small, perhaps 1/8” long, have an elongated shape, and move in a wiggling, crawling motion, which causes them to be commonly mistaken for worms. Before maggots mature into their adult, airborne form, they survive by feeding on waste and decayed food and flesh. For this reason, maggots thrive in environments like bathrooms and kitchens where various unsanitary conditions, such as (pardon the example) urine on the bathroom floor or uneaten or rotten food left out on the kitchen, attract them like their mature fly brethren to honey.

How is one to get rid of these pests? Unfortunately, maggots seem to be resistant to many of the common pesticides used to kill other bothersome insects (although in general we caution against the use of pesticides unless it is absolutely necessary). In fact, simply pouring boiling water on the maggots seems to be the most reliable way to kill them. Make sure you sweep up the carcasses and put them in a sealed trash bag.

More important, however, is to break the maggots’ reproductive cycle by going after the flies. For some reason, flies are more susceptible to most common bug sprays and pesticides. Hunt down the maggots’ winged parents and they will no longer be able to lay eggs and produce the next generation. Above all else, remove the conditions that allowed the maggots to thrive in the first place by cleaning the bathroom and removing any rotten or uneaten food from the kitchen. Also clean up any moisture that may have accumulated around the house, as part of the maggot life cycle requires them to seek out a damp place where they can mature into flies. Take these steps, and the war against the pests will soon be won.

In summary, small white worms found in the bathroom or kitchen are most likely maggots. Get rid of them by pouring boiling water on the maggots, using pesticides or bug sprays on the flies, and removing any rotten or uneaten food, moisture, or unsanitary conditions from your home.

The reader was concerned that he was dealing with a wood infestation, but fortunately this doesn’t seem likely, as we suspect that the reader is dealing with one of two different types of worms that don’t infest wood. What are these two types of worms? Millipedes and flea larvae, and neither of them are actually worms, although their cylindrical bodies given them the appearance of small worms.

Let’s begin with millipedes. These small, worm-like creatures are a brownish black color, and they tend to be about a quarter of an inch to one inch long. Almost all of their body segments have two legs, although these can be hard to see when the millipedes are small. (Still, our reader should look closely at the creatures in their entrance to see if they have tiny legs.) As a defense, millipedes curl into circles, one of the characteristics of the “worms” affecting our reader.

Finding millipedes is particularly likely to happen in the spring, as this is when the females lay their many eggs (often 300 eggs at one time, in fact). If our reader is dealing with millipedes, it’s possible they will grow, molt and perpetuate themselves, but most millipedes will die quickly inside your house, stripped as they are of their natural food and environment. Millipedes also don’t sting or bite, in contrast to centipedes. Even so, millipedes can emit a foul liquid when disturbed, which can irritate sensitive skin.

Since millipedes thrive in leaf litter and other moist debris, it is good to remove such stuff from around the house. Millipedes that are inside are ultimately coming from the outside, so if you can limit their presence around your house, they are less likely to get in. It’s also important to make sure that cracks and gaps around the house, like those found around a drafty door, are sealed.

Flea larvae can also look like small, black worms, although they vary in color. Flea larvae are really tiny, so they don’t perfectly fit the description of our reader’s creature, but they can still be noticeable to the naked eye. The larva stage is the second stage of the flea life cycle, and in any given flea population, 35 percent will be in this stage. In almost all cases, pets are responsible for introducing flea larvae into homes, as cats and dogs get fleas far more often than humans. They are often found on pets’ bedding, but if your pet spends time lying around the entrance of the house, it’s possible to find flea larvae in this location too. Flea larvae of course grow into fleas, and fleas can cause problems for pets and animals (in addition to causing irritation, they can also carry parasites), so they need to be eradicated from your home if they are found. This will most likely involve treating your pet for fleas, and once your pet is free of fleas, the flea life cycle is broken, meaning there will be no more flea larvae to deal with.

The first thing our reader should investigate is where the caterpillars or worms are being found. The reader mentioned that the creatures are all over the carpet in the morning, but it’s relevant to know where the carpet is in the house. If it’s the carpet by the front door, then it’s fairly clear how the caterpillars or worms are getting in: through cracks in the front door, or perhaps they are being tracked in by people or pets entering the house.

If this is the case, it’s best to seal up the door or any of the cracks around the entrance. Check the weather stripping to make sure the door is as close to airtight as possible. If you suspect that the worm-caterpillars are coming through weep holes, don’t plug them completely (that could lead to water-drainage problems), but partially seal them with plastic mesh. (Don’t use steel or copper scrub pads, as these will oxidize and stain your house.) You should also remain vigilant throughout the day, seeing if the worms appear at any other time besides the morning. If they do, it’s possible someone is tracking them in. If they only come in at night, when no one is entering the house, then the problem is likely related to gaps in the house.

No matter where you find the worm-like creatures in your house, the first thing you should check for are possible ways that the creatures might have entered the house, and if you find any gaps or cracks, address them in the ways described above. To be sure, it can often be difficult to figure out how worms, caterpillars, and other bugs are entering your house. Sometimes people find them in an upstairs hallway, for example, not by any windows or doors – where are they coming from? Check the attic, where moths, the parents of some caterpillars, like to dwell. The point is that it can be hard to find all the gaps in your house, and in fact you probably won’t be able to, but worms and caterpillars have to find their way in somehow, so the best way to address the problem is seal up your house as much as possible.

So, essentially, our advice boils down to this: first, get rid of the worms or caterpillars in the house already (obviously), then look for and seal any gaps in the house. After this, all you can really do is wait and hope that your sealants will do the trick, or at least reduce the problem. If you are dealing with a full-blown infestation, more extreme measures may need to be taken, but that lies outside the scope of this article.

The creature in question is primarily brown, although its underside is often a light color. What are these things – worms, caterpillars, or something else – and how do you get rid of them?

Let’s begin with the first question. The reader is probably dealing with one of two pests, both of which are caterpillars: the tent caterpillar (sometimes called “tent worms”) or the gypsy moth caterpillar. There are actually two types of tent caterpillars – the eastern tent caterpillar and the forest tent caterpillar – but the reader’s infestation sounds more like the latter, so that is what we’ll focus on. Forest tent caterpillars prefer hardwoods, like oak trees, and they have a brownish body and blues lines on their sides. Mature caterpillars can grow to be two inches long, and some of these older caterpillars have white strips on them. Although forest tent caterpillars (and eastern tent caterpillars, for that matter) are unsightly and a pain to deal with, the defoliation they cause rarely kills a healthy tree. So, even if our reader is utterly unable to get rid of these caterpillars, there is a good chance the infested oak tree will survive.

The same can be said of the gypsy moth caterpillar, although repeated infestations can weaken a tree, leaving it susceptible to other insects or diseases. Gypsy moth caterpillars change in appearance as they mature. In the earlier stages of life, these caterpillars are only about a quarter of an inch long and are a brown and black color. As they grow longer (a fully grown caterpillar can grow to be as long as two and a half inches), they develop bumps and black hairs on their bodies. Like the tent caterpillars, gypsy moth caterpillars like hardwood trees, and especially delight in oak trees.

It is fairly clear that our reader is dealing with one of the two pests described above, but how should the infestation be dealt with? It is worth repeating that trees can be quite resilient in the face of infestation, with some trees being able to withstand a complete defoliation without perishing. So, our reader can take comfort in the fact that as annoying as these caterpillars can be (who wants to sweep their dead bodies off a driveway every morning?), there is a decent chance the affected oak will survive the infestation.

Even so, there are measures that can be taken to address the infestation, regardless of whether the infestation is caused by tent caterpillars or gypsy moth caterpillars. Because we try to never recommend insecticides or other chemicals (although you can certainly find recommendations for these elsewhere on the web) we like something called a TreeHelp Bug Band, which is a protective roll that is wrapped around trees. These bands can keep caterpillars from reaching the foliage and can be used on infested and healthy trees.