Carpet beetles are a household pest. While the adults cause little damage, their newly hatched eggs become larva that are very destructive.

Patches of tiny, clear worms with black heads were discovered in this woman’s New Hampshire home. She is grossed out by the worms and asks for our help.

A reader recently sent in this image of a cluster of worms she found on her bed. In the words of our reader, the worms appear to be short, fat and white.

A reader located in Indiana recently reached out to us about a worm found on her hand. After killing the first of its kind, an identical worm was found a few hours later. The worm appears minuscule in size and transparent in color, with a black inside.

We received an interesting question from a reader through the All About Worms Facebook page about a “greenish grey worm” that his cat found on his lawn. The worm (or probably larva) is “2-3 inches long and had rings around it so he looked like a bunch of inter-tubes stacked on each other.” However, the defining characteristic of the creature is that it made noise. The reader was wondering what kind of worm or larva he (or technically his cat) found.

A reader recently wrote to us about what appears to be a small larva that she found in her soup. (We mentioned a possible “worm” in the soup only because people so often call larvae “worms.”) The reader is wondering what she found, and she also asked if she should be concerned if she accidentally ate one. We’ll tackle each question in turn, suggesting a possible identification and then discussing eating larvae, both in general and as it relates to the reader’s specific circumstances.

A reader asked us through the All About Worms Facebook page about “white worms with yellow bottoms [that are] eating my Dogwood trees.” These white worms with yellow bottoms are very likely white larvae with yellow bottoms, so we’ll adjust our usage accordingly. The reader asked us for an identification, and we’ll largely limit ourselves to this specific matter to keep things short and simple.

Via the All About Worms Facebook page, we received a message from a reader who found about 15 to 20 “worms” in her cat’s food dish. These “worms” are almost certainly insect larvae, so we’ll go ahead and refer to the larvae in the cat food from here on out. In addition to the cat food dish, the larvae were found in the bag of cat food, and in fact this is probably their point of origin, as various types of larvae will infest bags of pet food. The reader also indicated that one of her cats threw up the other night, but it isn’t clear if this is connected to the pet food larvae. No specific questions were asked, but the reader indicated “any info will be tremendously helpful,” so we’ll offer what we can and hope that it helps.

A reader wrote to us recently about some plump black larvae he has been finding in his RV after a water leak. At first he only found the larvae under his trashcan, but he has since spotted them in other parts of his RV – “on the bathroom floor and the carpet and around the seams where carpet stops.” We are pretty certain our reader is finding black soldier fly larvae, but that only addresses the first of his three questions. He is also wondering why the larvae are in his RV, and also how to get rid of them.

We received a question from a reader who found some sort of larvae in his house. One was found in the hallway, and the other was found on the carpet by the baseboard. The reader says the larvae are white and red on top and green on the bottom, and this can more or less be seen in the photo he submitted along with his question. The reader also reports that the larvae has eight to ten legs. We think our reader found grub worms, which aren’t worms but scarab beetle larvae, so that answers one of his questions. However, he was also curious where the larvae came from, so we’ll address this topic as well.

We received a question from a reader recently about a small maggot, or something like a maggot, that he found in his bathroom. The reader’s email to us does a decent job covering his situation, so we’ll quote it in full (with the addition of several articles, definite and indefinite): “This tiny white maggoty looking worm with light pinkish head and tail was on the edge of my bathroom sink this morning. My shitzu sleeps with me. Maybe it crawled on me in the night and fell off me at the sink? He goes potty in a woodsy area. I know there are chiggers he brings in. I’m in west central Missouri. Just north of Kansas City and it’s the end of June. Can you identify? Thank you.”

A reader wrote to us the other day about “carpet worms, carpet beetles, and possibly a moth worm” that she has seen moving in her carpet. The worms and beetles, which we’ll define more precisely below, are also eating holes in her shirt and “causing” lint to build up. The infestation has gotten so bad that the reader feel pricks when she walks around the carpet. For obvious reasons, she wants to get of the worms and beetles she is finding, and she wrote to us for help.

A reader wrote to us recently to ask about two worms she found in her kitchen. The worms have red bodies and tan heads, and they are perhaps a half an inch (one centimeter) long. The reader isn’t particularly concerned with what they are, and is instead focused on the question of where they came from. She has no indoor houseplants, and her windows and doors have been closed. She also says she has no food, but it is hard to take this literally, so perhaps she just doesn’t have food that is laying around the kitchen. As the reader points out, though, these two worms must of come from somewhere, and where might that be?

A few days ago we received a strange question about getting rid of worms or some other pest without the use of an exterminator. Actually, the question isn’t so much strange as it is incomplete, as we are only asked about getting rid of something, but the something isn’t specified. To see what we mean, here is the whole message we received, with a few minor corrections: “how do I get rid of them, without the cost of an exterminator? Is there any home remedies or pesticides that work?” No picture was submitted along with these questions, so this is all we are working with, and all we can offer are a couple of pieces of advice to our reader, as well as a general remark or two about the project of getting rid of worms or other pests.

We recently received a question via the All About Worms Facebook page about some “tiny” insects in a reader’s upstairs bathroom. The size of the insects is emphasized, and the reader reports that they can hardly be seen by the naked eye. As a point of reference, she says that they are smaller than a sesame seed, which certainly makes them very small, even in the insect world. The reader also reports that the insects are striped, and that they have a couple of hairs that visibly extend from their back ends, which stand in contrast to the little hairs that cover their bodies. The reader wants to know what she is finding, and she also wants to know why they are in her bathroom.

We received an interesting and highly specific question from a reader about ephydrid fly (shore fly) larvae, which are a type of maggot that live in natural hot springs. She wants to know if it is safe to sit in a hot springs that is “filled with ephyrdid fly maggots.” Psychologically, she doesn’t mind the presence of the larvae, and she is keen to enjoy the natural hot springs she comes across in nature, but she doesn’t want the larvae to “crawl up places they don’t belong.” She spells out this concern in more graphic detail, citing specific orifices, including a wound on her foot, and we’ll leave it to you to imagine some of the other openings she is concerned with. Are the maggots that live in hot springs dangerous, and will they crawl into places they don’t belong?

The other day we received a message from a reader who wants to know how to get rid of inchworms and silkworms, or how to get rid of “inch worms” and “silk worms,” as she has it. To call what we received a “message” is a bit misleading, however, since all we were sent was a mere sentence fragment composed almost entirely of capital letters. (Inexplicably, one instance of the word “worm” was written normally, but the rest was all caps.) We’ll try our best to answer our reader’s question, such as it is.

We received a question today from a reader who found some sort of worm-like bug in his car. The car had recently been used by someone whose house is infested with bed bugs, so at first the reader thought his car had bed bugs, but after doing some research, he concluded this likely isn’t the case. We think he is correct because there is a good chance he is actually finding carpet beetle larvae. We’ve written about carpet beetle larvae more times than we care to remember, but we’ve never heard of them showing up in a car before. So, we have new twist on an old theme – carpet beetle larvae were found, but in a car. What’s the deal with that?

We received a question via the All About Worms Facebook page about some extremely small larvae, or what seem to be larvae, that a reader found on her desk and chair. We use the descriptors “tiny” and “extremely small” for a reason – the larvae are nearly microscopic, and it would take an attentive eye to even notice them crawling around. They are probably only about a millimeter or so in length. The reader was quite alarmed by what she found, and emphasized her concern with the multiple question marks and exclamation points she used to conclude her question, which concerned identification. So, we are tasked with identifying the tiny larvae on the reader’s desk and chair.

A few days ago we received a question through the All About Worms Facebook page about a “brown worm” on a reader’s mattress. She also found dead worm bodies on the carpet and on a spare mattress in her bedroom. On the basis of articles we have published, she suspects she found carpet beetle larvae, and we think she is correct. Thus, she isn’t finding worms or dead worm bodies, but larvae and dead larva bodies. The reader’s problem is relatively widespread, as the carpet beetle larvae can be found throughout her entire apartment – on the mattress, carpet, and walls. The reader has already started implementing some of the elimination strategies we have written about before, but asked for further advice.