Setting:
In my shower, there is a scrubby which hangs on the shower rack at the ready to clean people. On the small seat below, sits another demoted scrubby in moderate disrepair. It slumps at the ready to clean showers. (Very good at removing calcium deposits, as it turns out.)
Exhibit A: Bath Scrubby
Scene:
While taking my evening shower, I happen to glance at the seat where the demoted scrubby sits. Next to it is a handful of empty shampoo and conditioner bottles that need to go out to the recycling bin. I notice them every day when I take my shower. Then I promptly forget them once I’m clean and dry and eager for bed.
This night as I glance at the cluster of bottles, I notice a small black thing under the scrubby. What could that be? I lift the scrubby. No black thing. I examine the scrubby itself. There it is. It’s moving. [Insert girlish squealing and flinging of scrubby here.] Eventually either a semblance of rational thought or a dose of morbid curiosity lead me cautiously back to the scrubby and its apparent tenant.
It’s an earthworm. Maybe two. No, one. Definitely one. A big, long one. Disgust does not leave, but it nudges over to make a little room for confusion.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
Let me make a few clarifications as to the general state of my bathroom. One could not go so far as to call it pristine. I imagine the sinks could use a wipe down and it’s about time for me to scrub the toilet. There are not, however, large piles of earth or organic matter lying around on the floor.
I spent the rest of shower pondering the worm from a safe distance all the while keeping a sharp eye on it in case it decided to relocate. I’m not typical squeamish about worms, but I don’t typically invite them into the shower with me either.
Exhibit B: Lumbricus terrestris
Earthworms, I recently read in National Geographic, are not native to North America. They came across the Atlantic with European settlers, jacking a ride inside cozy root balls aboard ships. They spread with the settlers from east to west. I imagine the first Native American to come across one of these little fellows while tending his crops was at least as perplexed as I was to find one in my bath scrubby. So clearly these little dudes can travel, but my scrubby is hardly a desirable vacation spot.
After my shower, once Shawn had de-threaded the worm from our ex-scrubby and released him to the backyard, we began to postulate potential explanations.
Hypothesis 1: She Came in through the Bathroom Window
We have one bathroom window. It is above the shower and most notably, directly above the seat with the offending scrubby. The base of the window is more than 6’ off the ground. There are no plants on the other side except a few low growing mint varieties in shallow bowls. I’ve never seen worms climb walls. We classified this hypothesis as “bloody unlikely” [technical term].
Hypothesis 2: That Darned Cat
Our cats have brought in small passengers from the outside world from time to time. Generally very small slugs acquired when rolling around in the garden sunshine. It is conceivable that one might have picked up a wormy passenger and brought it inside. There are two considerable pieces of evidence against this explanation:
- The bathroom door remains shut unless occupied as Meeko has an inexplicably adversarial relationship with the bath mat.
- While I would not classify my cats as particularly intelligent examples of their breed, they are fairly well attuned to snack-sized organisms that wiggle.
Hypothesis 2.1: Born Yesterday
“Well, maybe it wasn’t that big when the cats brought it in here. Maybe it was an egg. How do worms reproduce anyway? I can’t recall.”
“Aside from cutting them in half?”
“I don’t think that counts as reproduction.”
“It makes more worms.”
“Point conceded, but it can hardly be the usual method.”
“It’s a pretty big worm. I don’t think it was born yesterday.”
“Alright. Ix-nay that idea too.”
Hypothesis 3: The Infamous Pot Plant (+ 1 level)
There is a fern in a pot near the sink in the bathroom. Last week in a burst of spring fever, I repotted several plants including the fern. It is conceivable that the worm was in the bag of potting soil and was transferred to the fern’s new pot and brought inside. I then gave the fern a good drenching which might have forced the worm to leave its earthy home for less saturated environments. It then crawled across the formica, past the sink, catapulted off the countertop, traversed another couple of meters of linoleum to the shower, climbed up over the 4” lip of the shower, under the shower door (which is usually shut) and through the metal groove, up the other side and into the shower itself. Then it just had to cross another meter or so of shower floor and scale another 0.5 meter of vertical slope up to the surface of the seat, after which time it would of course be tired of hard, impenetrable surfaces and would take refuge inside my cleaning scrubby, where it would live undetected for an entire week while it watched me shower.
Incredibly, this is the most viable theory I have.
I suppose I could further test it. I could hunt through the fern’s pot for more worms or evidence that a worm had been there. I think I’m through with worm wonderings though. I’ll just ban all scrubbies from the bathroom and maybe move the plant to a location where any stowaways wouldn’t have the opportunity to see me naked, just to be thorough.
I’ll close with one of my all-time favorite poems:
Early Bird
Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird
And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.
If you’re a bird, be an early bird-
But if you’re a worm, sleep late.-Shel Silverstein
Mr. Worm, I wish you safe travels on your inexplicable path. I hope you find many meals of decomposable detritus to tantalizes your taste buds. But stay out of my bathroom or Tweety and I are going to come to an arrangement.