We heard from a reader who has found some thread like “worms” in her bed as of late. She said they crawl over her skin and it makes her nervous. She isn’t sure if they are responsible for the bumps on her skin, or if she should be more worried.

She attached some photos that show a dark gray creature that appears to have several appendages, a round head, and a clearly defined tail. The creature in the picture is not smooth or segmented, but textured almost like a twig or stick.

We would like to begin by saying we are not medical professionals and cannot offer any medical advice, or even speculate about the effect these bugs might have had on her skin. We definitely think she should reach out to a doctor for more information if she is concerned with her health!

That being said, we are curious what these creatures might be. Sadly, we aren’t able to make any firm identification on this worm-like organism. Based on the description and photos, we will offer a few guesses.

Our first guess is that this creature is a brown cranberry spanworm. These worms are often found in the Midwest in cranberry beds, as cranberries are their main food source. Due to these details, we are fairly certain that our reader hasn’t discovered any spanworms, but the appearance of the worm she found does slightly resemble that of a cranberry spanworm so we thought we would mention it just in case.

Our other guess is that she has found millipedes. This guess is more reasonable, but the picture of the bug she sent in doesn’t match the appearance of a millipede very closely. However, in one of the photos the creature is curled up into a circle, which is a behavior that millipedes use a defense mechanism.

We aren’t positive about what creature our reader is dealing with, however we recommend she begin by cleaning her bedding to get rid of these “worms”. If any of our other readers have ideas about what this might be, we encourage them to comment!

To sum up, our reader discovered some gray “worms” in her bed. We aren’t sure what these creatures are, but think millipedes might be a possibility.