“I have some kind of worm that has eaten or bored through my stone fireplace”, reports this reader in Tallahassee, Florida. “Can you tell me what it is and how to get rid of it?” she asks.

“I see it on my laminate flooring”, she adds in her description of the worm, which we can barely see in the photos below. In a couple of them, we can make out a long, black/gray shape that we assume to be the worm, but in other photos, we are not quite sure what we are supposed to be looking at.

Now, based on what our reader has told us (that this worm has bored through a stone fireplace) we are very doubtful that this is a worm or worm-like creature. The only worms that are known to be able to consume stone and bore through it are marine worms, meaning they live in aquatic habitats (specifically the ocean).

One such worm is the shipworm, which is technically a type of mollusk, which can grow up to five feet in length. Shipworms have been known to nearly capsize boats due to their incredible ability to bore through tough materials. Obviously, marine worms would not have ended up in our reader’s fireplace. So with that in mind, we think that the worm she found in her fireplace is unrelated to the holes that have appeared in the fireplace.

That said, we do not know what type of worm this is. Not only does the context not match up with any known terrestrial worms, but the pictures are not clear enough to show us any of its finer characteristics. If she wishes to, she could take the worm to her local county extension office to have someone physically examine the worm. They will have a much better chance at identifying it. Alternatively, she is also welcome to send us more pictures, taken in better lighting and with a sharper focus on the worm.

Lastly, if our reader is worried about the structural integrity of her fireplace due to the new holes, it is probably best to contact a professional to fix it.

To conclude, we do not know what the worm that our reader found in her fireplace is, but we can say that it is definitely not eating or boring through her stone fireplace. Despite not being able to identify the worm, we nonetheless hope that this article proves helpful and we wish our reader the very best.

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