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!

The first question – what type of worms are in our reader’s lawn? – has a simple answer: earthworms, or in any event this is likely the case, as earthworms and lawns go to together like deer and the forest. Anyone who has a lawn has probably seen plenty of earthworms, but we’ll provide some quick background anyway. Earthworms are a part of the subclass Oligochaeta, which belongs to the annelid phylum. There are around 10,000 species of terrestrial and marine worms in the Oligochaeta subclass, some of which are the various kinds of earthworms. Okay, enough taxonomy.

How can earthworms make a lawn uneven? First, earthworms aerate soil, or at least the top two feet of it, by digging tunnels through it. As any gardener will tell you, this is a good thing because aerated soil is conducive to plant growth. So, worms in your lawn indicate that healthy soil is beneath it. However, tunnels dug by worms can collapse, and this might cause the surface of your lawn to become slightly uneven. This isn’t a major an issue, though.

The bigger problem is this: because worms consume organic matter as they tunnel around your lawn, they will inevitably leave behind worm castings (vermicast, worm humus, or worm manure, to list a few other names). Again, this is largely a good thing, as worm waste is nothing more than nutrient rich fertilizer. Worm castings become problematic in excessive amounts because as they accumulate over time, your lawn can become bumpy, which in turn can cause you to cut too many green shoots while mowing, a problem called “scalping.” Scalping can give rise to brown spots on your lawn and can also encourage weed growth. Apart from producing too many castings, an excessive number of worms on your lawn can also attract animals like moles (because moles eat worms), which can lead to additional yard troubles. (When moles dig around your yard, it can obviously be a problem.)

What can you do about the worms in your yard? It should be stated up front that you don’t want to remove worms from your lawn because they are so helpful in keeping your soil healthy. That said, you should avoid over-watering your yard because this will encourage worms to stay near the surface (worms love moisture), causing them to leave more castings on the surface and potentially attract additional pests like moles. Also, when worms castings are found, wait for them to dry and then rake them into your lawn. (Note: It will be fairly hard to “find” worm castings, as they basically just look soil. So, if you notice that worms are living in your yard, as they likely will be, you should rake periodically.) This will prevent the castings from building up. Following these two bits of advice should keep your lawn fairly level. However, if your lawn is already severely bumpy from years of worm-casting accumulation, some form of lawn restoration may be necessary.

Before we get into earthworms and Nebraska, we should point out that earthworms are also part of the composting process – they are just slower at converting organic waste into fertilizer, which is why red worms are preferred by people maintaining a compost bin. So, when you learn about composting and worms involvement thereof, this applies to a wide range of worms, including earthworms.

Anyway, the earthworms of Nebraska are the same earthworms that you can find in many other places in the United States, which is to say that in discovering any information about earthworms in the U.S., you’re also discovering information about earthworms that live in Nebraska. (For that matter, if you find information about earthworms in general, you’ll be discovering information about the earthworms of Nebraska, as the various species of earthworms are closely related.) In other words, there is no earthworm that exclusively lives in Nebraska, as far as we know. But perhaps we should step back a bit and consider earthworms in general.

Earthworms belong to a subclass of animals known as Oligochaeta, which is itself part of the annelid phylum. In addition to earthworms, the Oligochaeta subclass includes a number of other terrestrial and aquatic worms, like blackworms, pot worms, and ice worms. The Oligochaeta, containing approximately 10,000 known species of worms, make up nearly half of the annelid phylum. Several of these species are the various types of earthworms, including, of course, the earthworms that live in Nebraska and other parts of the U.S. So, perhaps our reader’s question boils down to this: what specific species of earthworm live in Nebraska?

Given the variety of earthworms that exist, there are surely a few different kinds that live in Nebraska, but one of the more common species is the river worm (scientific name: diplocardia Riparia), a species that lives in the Central United States, including Nebraska. They tend to live in fine soils, and so are especially fond of river banks (hence the name). They have dark brown skin and tend to be about five to eight inches long. Like lots of other worms, they subsist off of organic matter, like leaf litter and other detritus in the soil.

So, the river worm is one species of earthworm that lives in Nebraska, but as we implied earlier, our reader should really just focus on reading about earthworms in general if they want to know more about these creatures. Sure, there are minor differences between the various types of earthworms (there has to be, otherwise they wouldn’t be regarded as different species), but they are all extremely similar. When the common folk (as opposed to scientists studying worms) talk of earthworms, they are referring to earthworms in general. This is how the term is understood. There is tons of information about earthworms out there, so we encourage our reader to dig into this material to help him on his quest to learn more about earthworms in Nebraska.

However, we recently received an email from a reader about a specific worm he found in his compost, and he was wondering what type of worm this might be. Here is the picture we were sent:

In answering our reader’s question, we thought we would also point out a couple of the common worms that are used for composting.

For people who have an official composting area or bin set up (as opposed to just some organic waste lying around), they are more likely than not using red worms, which go by several different names, including redworms (as a single word), brandling worms, tiger worms, and red wigglers. (Of course, they also have a scientific name: Eisenia fetida.) Red worms are preferred for the task of composting because they consume a ton (they can eat more than their body weight in compost every single day) and reproduce quickly. Both result in more unhelpful waste being converted into helpful fertilizer, which is of course the goal of composting.

Another worm associated with the process of composting is the common earthworm (more precisely, Lumbricus rubellus, which is actually one of many different species of earthworms, but that’s neither here nor there). Unlike red worms, earthworms are generally not specifically acquired for one’s compost bin. While they breakdown organic waste and convert it into nutrient-rich fertilizer, just like red worms, they do it at a slower rate. If you come across some accumulation of organic waste that is not part of a compost operation, there is a good chance you’ll find some earthworms, but not red worms, in it. You might also find earthworms in compost bins dominated by red worms, however, as earthworms are more effective at breaking down organic waste that is already partially decomposed.

And what about our reader’s question? Given what’s been said so far, it is likely that our reader simply found one of the two worms described above, most likely the red worm, as the reader seems to have a full-blown composting operation going. His confusion may have arisen from the fact that the worm he found was quite small, but this probably just means that the worm was early in its life cycle. Red worms, after coming out of their eggs (which, interestingly, are actually wrapped up in a cocoon), are a pale yellowish color, but as they mature their bodies take on a brown hue. These traits more or less match the appearance of the worm in the picture our reader sent us, so it seems likely that they came across a developing red worm.

So, if you find a worm in a composting bin, it’s a probably one of the common worms that are found in composting bins, even if it looks slightly different for reasons of age.

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.

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.