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Posted in Caterpillars Pest Worms Worms Found in the House

Webbing Clothes Moth Larvae Found Between Clothing in Basement

“Please help!” this reader exclaims about the white, larva-looking creature pictured below. “I found these between my clothes that were in the basement” he states, before asking us what he should do about his situation.

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Posted in Drain Fly Larvae Worms Found in the House Worms Generally

Creepy Maggots Found in Bathroom Could Be Housefly or Drain Fly Larvae

“Every once in a while I’ll find a maggot or 3 on the floor in the bathroom” says this reader. She asks us if we can tell her what to do, how to get rid of said maggots, and what might be causing them to appear.

apple worm
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Posted in Garden Worms Pest Worms Worms Generally

Worms You Can Find in Your Food Part 2: Fruit Worms

The last place anyone would probably want to find a worm is inside the food they were about to put inside their bodies. As a follow up to our previous article on the same subject, this article will cover specifically worms you can find in your fruit.

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Posted in Composting Worms Worms Found in the House Worms Generally

Dozens of White Larvae Falling From Ceiling Fan are House Fly Larvae

Several dozen larvae have been falling from this reader’s bathroom ceiling fan over a span of several days. The larvae appear to be white, have no legs, and, in the words of our reader, “one end” of the larvae “is flat and the other has a tapered pointy end.”

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Posted in Composting Worms Pest Worms Worms Found in the House

Fly Larvae Infest the Kitchen of this Man in Atlanta, GA

This man in Atlanta, Georgia has been finding a lot of worms in his breakfast nook next to his kitchen. According to our reader, and as seen in the images provided, these worms are 1/4-inch long, tan in color, and with a “brown spot on their top front.”

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Posted in Black Soldier Fly Larvae - BSFL Composting Worms Gross Worms

Maggots and BSFL Found Near Bin and Litterbox

A puzzling case of separate clusters of worms of different species was discovered by this woman and her caretakers in the UK. The first cluster of worms was found behind “the bin/cat food/litter,” and were deemed to be maggots, while the second cluster of unidentified worms, which were also found in the same place, were dark brown in color, and segmented.

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Posted in Gross Worms Worms Found in the House Worms in Humans

Worm With Tail Found Swimming in Bathroom is a Rat-tailed Maggot

A concerned reader recently sent in this image of a worm-like creature he has been finding in his bathroom for the past two months. He says it is about an inch in length and “swims like a worm, contracting and extending its body”.

tiny maggot in bathroom
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Posted in Interesting Bugs

Tiny White Maggots in Bathroom

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.”

Horsehair Worm in Forest
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Posted in Gross Worms

Short White Maggots Inside Crickets

We received an interesting question from a reader the other day via the All About Worms Facebook page about “some sort of short white maggot” crawling out of the abdomen of a cricket. The reader feeds the crickets to his chameleon, and recently gnats have been found in the “chameleon’s habitat.” The reader speculated there might be a connection between the gnats and the short white maggots – indeed, he thought the maggots might be the gnats themselves – and asked us to weigh in on the matter. What type of short white maggot could be inside a cricket?

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Posted in Pest Worms

Worms in an Ice Machine

A little while ago, a reader wrote to us about worms in an ice machine, by which he meant the type of machine you might find in a break room at an office or in a restaurant kitchen. The reader didn’t see the worms in the ice machine himself, but merely heard a report of worms being there, and so he was wondering if it is even possible to find a worm in an ice machine. If it is possible, he further wondered, how did the worms get into the ice machine? The reader didn’t express interest in what type of worm might be in the machine (if it even is a worm – it might be a maggot, as we shall see), but we’ll have to speculate on this matter in the course of answering our reader’s precise questions.

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Posted in Gross Worms

Little, White Worms in the Kitchen

A reader recently found little, white worms in his kitchen. The reader left “dirty washing” (perhaps something like dirty plates or dirty rags) on the kitchen floor over night, and in the morning there were lots of little, white worms on the kitchen floor, directly underneath the “washing.” We receive a lot of questions about little, white worms, and ironically these questions are rarely about little, white worms at all. Rather, they tend to be about maggots, which are indeed little and white, but they are not worms (for reasons we’ll explain in a moment). We think the white “worms” our reader found are maggots, but we’ll also throw out a few more possibilities for our reader to investigate.

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Posted in Gross Worms

Maggots in Your House

We were recently sent a question about small white worms, which a reader has been finding around his house. Of course, the reader wanted to know what these small, white worms are. He also sent us a picture, helping us better identify the worm in question. In this particular instance, we are fairly sure our reader didn’t find a worm at all, but rather a maggot. More precisely, he found maggots, as there are two small creatures in the picture we were sent. Why do we think he found maggots?

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Posted in Gross Worms Pest Worms

Small Worms in the Shower

A little while back, we received a question from a reader about small worms (or larvae) he found in his shower. Actually, the word “small” doesn’t adequately capture the size of the worm (or, again, larva) our reader found because they are said to be .01 of an inch in size, which is about the size of a speck of dust. With all due respect to our reader, we think a measurement miscalculation was probably made because .01 of an inch seems impossibly small for any sort of worm or larva, and this is true regardless of whether he was referring to the length or width of the creature he found. In assuming that a mistake was made, however, we must guess at the size of the worm, further complicating our idea of the creature with which our reader is dealing.

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Posted in Gross Worms

Groups of Maggots

We write about maggots a lot. We’re not entirely sure why, but many a reader question centers on the ubiquitous (or so you would think) maggot. We’ve written about maggots on the bathroom floortwice – and we’ve also touched on maggots found in bone marrow and maggots and dogs. What’s more, all of these maggot-related articles were written recently, within the last half year or so. Clearly, there is no shortage of reader queries about maggots.

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Posted in Gross Worms Pest Worms

Worms on the Bathroom Floor

A rather distressed reader wrote to us the other day about some worms he found on the bathroom floor. To his further chagrin and disgust (the word “yuck,” all letters capitalized, appeared twice in the reader’s email), he also found one of the worms in the basket of his dirty laundry. The worms are small, about one centimeter in length, and they are a clear brownish color. The worms also have several horizontal lines on their body. What are these small worms on the bathroom floor, and what can our reader do to get rid of them?

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Posted in Gross Worms

Worms in Bone Marrow? Probably Maggots

A reader wrote to us about a fascinating discovery he recently made: when he split open a beef marrow bone – the type you might get from a butcher, which is where our reader got his bone – for his dogs to get at the marrow, he discovered that the bone was filled with hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of tiny worms, or what appeared to be worms. The worms were inside the bone, burrowed into the bone marrow. Strangely, it appeared that the bone was completely sealed; in other words, it looked as though there was no way for anything to get into the bone. So, how on earth did an abundance of small worm-like creatures make there way into a bone, and what are these creatures anyway?

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Posted in Gross Worms Pest Worms

Small White Critters Found in the Bathroom: Worms or Maggots?

A reader found some very small white worms in his bathtub and would like to know what they are. While there are a couple of different possibilities, small, white, wormlike creatures found in the bathroom or kitchen are most often maggots (another possibility is that they are planarians, a type of flatworm, but these worms are usually aquatic so this seems unlikely unless the reader’s bathtub was full when he sent us his question).

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Posted in Gross Worms

Maggots and Dogs

A reader wrote to us with a question regarding whether maggots can survive after eating the flesh of a dead poisoned dog. Maggots, those household pests that often appear in food after it has decayed or rotted, are actually the larval form of the common housefly. Before maggots mature into their adult, airborne form they survive by feeding on decayed flesh. For this reason, maggots are often found in garbage disposals, sinks, rotten food, and among livestock. A dead dog would present an irresistible target for your average maggot.

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Posted in Gross Worms

Small White Worms With a Black Dot on the End, a.k.a Maggots

A reader recently asked about a tiny white worm with a black dot on the end. This reader indicated that they found the worm in an ice machine. Given these two facts, the answer is that this “worm” is most likely a maggot, which is the larva of a fly.

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Posted in Parasite Worms Pest Worms

What Is the Difference Between Maggots and Larvae?

They can also cause lesions. If you have an infestation and you are trying to get rid of maggots, spraying them with insecticide, dousing them with hydrochloric acid or pouring salt over them just won’t work.