About a week ago someone brought in a sandwich bag that contained about 15 little worms and a few pieces of leaves. All the worms were curled up and not moving, so I was hoping that they were dead. Normally, I don’t care to look at worms or caterpillars because they remind me so much of snakes. Over the years I have seen millipedes about two inches in size crawling around in our office lobby. Luckily there has been someone here to get rid of them for me.
Well, in this particular instance what was in the bag turned out to be millipedes. Dr. Will Hudson, Professor-Extension Entomologist, gave this possible reasoning for why they were found inside. He writes that wet weather favors their population growth, and warm wet winter/spring weather has always produced big numbers. They usually don’t start moving indoors until the mulch or other substrate where they live starts to dry down in early summer. Maybe the wet weather has flooded them out and they had to go looking for a drier place? They usually die pretty quickly once they get inside due to desiccation, but there can be 1000’s in a given site or yard.
Picture of millipede under a microscope
Photo by James Morgan