One of our readers reached out to us with a rather disgusting situation. She discovered something that resembled a worm in an ice cube from a fast food restaurant chain. She wants to know if what she found is actually a worm, and if it is a worm then what kind of worm it is. This is the picture she shared with us:

We must admit this creature is very gross looking! We can imagine that it was slightly traumatizing to discover this in an ice cube, especially an ice cube from a place that serves food. We do believe this specimen is a worm. To be more specific, we think it might be an earthworm. It has the brownish purple coloring that most earthworms have, and it appears to have a segmented body. We are hesitant to confirm this only because the creature is so mangled that it is hard to make out its features.

In the past we have heard from readers who have discovered worms or worm-like organisms in ice cubes or ice machines. However, we have never heard about a reader finding a worm in an ice cube from a restaurant. We aren’t sure how this worm ended up in an ice cube. Perhaps the ice machine has a pool of water in it because of partially thawed ice, and this water provides a hospitable and inviting environment to an earthworm. Even if that were the case, we aren’t sure how a worm could crawl into an ice machine.

We understand that our reader will probably not be eating ice from this fast food restaurant chain anymore. She might decide she wants to confront the restaurant, or she might want to simply move on. We will leave that up to her!

To conclude, a reader discovered a worm in an ice cube from a fast food restaurant chain. We believe the specimen she found was an earthworm.