“Found these in my lounge,” says this reader about the gray-brown critter photographed below. According to our reader, this segmented creature is approximately 3/5-inch in length and 2/5-inch in width, and she has been finding an average of one per day for the past few weeks. “What is it?”

We received a blunt series of questions (accompanied by a blurry photograph) about what appears to be a black soldier fly larva. The reader asked – in all capital letters – what the creature was and what “caused” it. The reader was also wondering if the creature is harmful and how she can get rid of it. Again, the picture that came along with the question, which is the only information we were given about the creature, is about as unclear as the philosophy, such as it is, of Adorno. However, it nevertheless appears to depict a black soldier fly larva, and since we have no additional information (like the location and size of the creature) to gauge this hypothesis, we’ll operate on the assumption that reader did in fact find black soldier fly larvae. The rather frantic tone of our reader’s email, implied by its capital letters and staccato style of questioning, led us to assume our reader is worried above all else that black soldier fly larvae are harmful, so we will address this concern first, and then address her other questions thereafter.