My mother always referred to a day or two in springtime as a wormy day. One day last month – April 15 to be exact – was such a day here in central Indiana and not just because income taxes were due! At least that is how it appeared to me when I walked down our asphalt driveway to retrieve the morning newspaper. Worms were crawling every which way on the road.

It was one of those spring days that began with an early morning rain. An April shower of the type that is purported to bring May flowers. But this little bit of precipitation also brought worms to paved roadways and sidewalks.

The worms wiggling their way across our driveway on this damp morning were what some people call earthworms. Earthworms are tube-shaped creatures in the Phylum Annelida. Such creatures are sometimes called fishing worms because they are often used as fishing bait. My mother loved to fish, and she always took advantage of “wormy days” to replenish her supply of fishing worms.

The term worm has been used to describe a number of different creatures that are invertebrate animals. In general, worms have long slender bodies and no limbs, such as those earthworms that were crawling on our road. Another type of organism that is called a worm is a nematode. Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth. Some nematodes are free living. Others are parasites living in plants and animals. Nematodes are also known as roundworms.

Various roundworms, including those called hookworms, pinworms, ascarids and whipworms, are common intestinal parasites of humans. In fact, the roundworm species Ascaris lumbricoides is the most common of all internal human parasites and has been estimated to affect as many as one billion people worldwide. It just may be that this human parasite was the reason that fidgety children where sometimes thought to be wormy!

Another human parasite with the word worm in its name is the tapeworm. The name suggests that this worm is flattened like a piece of tape. Like the roundworms mentioned above, some tapeworms live in the digestive systems of humans where they share our food.

Worm is also a word used to describe some insect larvae, including those that develop into flies. Technically fly larvae are called maggots, but like other worms worthy of their name these insects do not have an obvious head and lack legs.

Larvae of most butterflies and moths are called caterpillars, but some are known as worms even though they have an obvious head and legs. They do have fairly long, tube-shaped bodies. Some common insect worms include the armyworms that sometimes become so numerous that they destroy fields of vegetation such as grass, wheat or corn.

Another insect worm is the corn earworm. As the name suggests, these moth caterpillars feed on corn kernels and show up on the tips of sweet corn ears. Most people who eat sweet corn from the cob have found a worm in an ear on occasion.

Cabbageworms are cater-pillars of a white butterfly.

These worms feed on cabbage and broccoli and other cole crops. Anyone who has grown such plants in a garden knows that keeping them free of worms is a difficult job. Insect worms also show up in apples. Sometimes the worm culprit is a fly maggot; sometimes it is a caterpillar of the coddling moth. Either way, biting into a wormy apple is not something most people find appealing or appetizing.

Worm is generally not considered a term of endearment in almost any context. For instance, the word is used as a term of contempt to describe a weak or despicable person.

It can also be used to describe a person who tries to get into something in an underhanded way – by worming their way in.

The term worm shows up in works of some poets. Shakespeare uses the line, “The prey of worms, my body being dead” in Sonnet 74. In Henry VI, he wrote:

“Who ‘scapes the lurking serpent’s mortal sting?

Not he that sets his foot upon her back.

The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.”

Edgar Allan Poe titled a poem The Conqueror Worm that concludes with the lines:

“That the play is the tragedy, ‘Man.’

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

Shakespeare and Poe seem to use the term worm to represent a snake. I guess it works – a snake is a legless animal with a tubular shape!

Readers with questions or comments for Tom Turpin may write to him in care of this publication.