“Does this look like a dog or cat parasite?” asks Lee about the oddly-shaped, brown, worm-like creature pictured below. “I found it on my bedroom rug. It’s about a 1/4-inch long and is unaffected by touch or heat.” Now, we have to say right off the bat that we will not be able to confirm or deny if this is a cat or dog parasite. The reason for this is because whenever parasites are involved, or even suspected of being involved, the situation becomes medical in nature. Since we are not medical professionals, we are not qualified or legally able to identify parasites, given the health risks they pose. Doing so would be tantamount to providing a diagnosis, which only a medical professional, in this case a vet, would be qualified to do.

We received some very interesting pictures from a man who found a creature in his living room. The critter appeared to be dried out and dead. It was about 1.25” (~3.2cm) long. Its body was black in color, though its underside was brown. The interesting thing is that it has two or three hook-like appendages around its mouth. He has scoured the internet, but has not been able to identify it.

We received an extremely detailed question about a worm a while back from a reader in England. The reader has been trying to identify the worm, which is gray and slimy, for the past nine years (since April 14th, 2006, to be exact). The reader found the creature under a discarded pillow in Holywells Park in the town of Ipswich, which is in Suffolk, England. (He even gave us an Ordnance Survey National Grid reference, a British geographic grid reference system, so that we could pinpoint the exact area where he found the worm.) The worm leaves a “slim-trail” behind it when it moves. The reader thought be might have found a “Worm Slug,” or Boettgerilla pallens, but he has since ruled out this possibility. What kind of slimy, gray worm is our reader finding?

A reader in the San Francisco Bay area reported that on a recent morning her house was “covered” with “thousands” of worms or larvae. They were on the wood paneling of the house’s exterior, essentially enveloping entire walls. After applying what we can only imagine was a massive dose insecticide, the reader managed to kill all but three of the creatures on her home. So, the problem was essentially taken care of by the time she wrote to us, but she was still curious what she found. She said the creatures looked like snails because of their antennae, but we actually think she found slugs (snails without shells) with tentacles for reasons we will detail shortly.

A reader wrote to us a few days ago about some small black worms she found at the bottom of her kids’ laundry basket. She also found a couple more worms when transferring their clothes from the washing machine to the drier, so the worms can evidently be traced back to the clothing of her children. The reader was wondering what these black worms in the laundry basket are, and we think they might be leeches (which are actually worms) or potentially slugs (which aren’t worms).

We received a fairly puzzling question a little while ago from a reader about what he believed to be a red worm. Much was made of the red worm’s “antennae,” which are evidently retractable if we are understanding the reader’s description properly. If the worm did have retractable antennae, the “antennae” are probably tentacles and the “worm” is likely a slug. Below we explain the “red slug in the bathroom” hypothesis in more detail, exploring it with reference to the reader’s precise circumstances.

A reader wrote to us about a brown worm on his patio that was crawling toward a leaky water pipe. The reader was quite taken by the worm, and said “it was amazing!” The worm is about four inches (10 centimeters) long, and it had “titticles that parted.” While we find the word “titticles” to be excellent, not least because of is sexually confused connotations, we presume our reader meant tentacles. What could this brown worm with tentacles on the patio have been?

A frustrated reader wrote to us about the “numerous 1 inch worms” that appear on his porch after it rains. The reader has never experienced the worms-after-rain phenomenon until this year, and he is irritated with the worms’ presence. (Or the presence of whatever creature our reader is finding – they could be slugs, for instance.) He wants to get rid of the worms (or slugs) on his porch, which he regards as nothing but a pest. The worms are brown and, as mentioned, one inch in length. Most notably, the worms are described as having “antennae or eyes” on the front end of their bodies. What are the one-inch, brown worms on the patio after it rains, and how can you get rid of them?