Beware toxic, foot-long worms invading US — here’s what to do if you see the ‘demonic flesh-eaters’
Stop, hammertime!
Weeks of heavy rain have prompted a plague of massive, toxic hammerhead flatworms to erupt from the ground in North Texas, much to the chagrin of frightened locals.
“It was terrifying, like these are truly the end times, even the worms are demonic,” Keller resident Adam Ingle told NBC5 of the subterranean scourge, which reared its hammerhead in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston regions.
Named for their flat, ball-peen-evoking noggins, these foot-long invertebrates secrete neurotoxins that can irritate human skin upon contact and also poison pets that ingest them.
These invaders also prey on native species such as the earthworms that tend the soil, which can impact the environment.
Since arriving in the US from Southeast Asia in the late 1800s, the worms have spread across the nation, cropping up everywhere from the Pacific Northwest to New York and most recently, North Texas, despite having been in the Lone Star State for decades.
While they generally prefer to remain underground out of the sunlight, the heavy torrents brought these wriggling menaces to the surface, as seen in multiple viral TikTok videos of the groundbreaking phenomenon.
“In one of the creepy videos, the worms are wriggling on the surface of the soil like a miniature version of the monsters from “Tremors” while another shows a lengthy specimen inching its way across an envelope.
A third depicts one of the vacuum-headed critters crawling across a screen.
“Houstonnn we have a problem!!” the poster wrote in the caption. “You don’t want this guy in your garden or near your pets!”
Unfortunately, eliminating this tiny terror is no mean feat — chopping them in half only increases their numbers as they reproduce asexually.
“Don’t kill it, don’t squish it, don’t cut it up, because it makes three or four more worms,” warned Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, per NBC5. “Tear it in half, now you’ve got two worms.”
To dispatch hammerhead worms, experts advise bagging the worms and freezing them for up to 48 hours or leaving them in a salt and vinegar solution.
Due to their toxic nature, homeowners should avoid touching them without wearing gloves or other protection, even if they’re already dead.
