Friday Night with Crazy Worms

Friday night. May 22, 2026.

Neighbors are partying. Music, beers, laughter. Skunk smell drifting through the air.

Meanwhile, I’m outside with a headlamp and my now best-selling bug and tick spray, fighting bugs flying directly into my eyeballs while hunting invasive jumping worms.

At one point I could hear teenagers walking down the sidewalk toward my house, and I suddenly became very aware of how this must look from a distance.

Picture a grown woman in rain boots spinning in circles with a long-handled weapon like Neo from The Matrix while aggressively interrogating the soil.

Honestly, if I were them, I’d probably keep walking too.

The heat wave brought them out in full force tonight.

75+ degrees. Humid. Chaos.

I’m wildly swinging my newly sharpened worm weapon so I don’t have to work as hard. This is my life now — pacing around the yard like a swamp lunatic while everyone else has a social life.

But here’s the interesting part:

After a year of doing this, I realized something tonight.

Last year, when I turned on my headlamp, the ground literally moved under my feet.

Thousands. Everywhere.

Tonight?

Just hundreds.

Still horrifying.

Still disgusting.

Longest measured tonight: 16 inches.

But… progress.

I’ve learned they slow down when the sprinkler runs and the soil softens. You don’t have to do the mustard water like google suggests. Besides that isn’t nice to the good worms! I’ve learned humidity, temperature, moonlight, and moisture all affect surface activity and movement patterns.

I’ve also learned they apparently enjoy gathering along sidewalk edges like tiny drunk retirees sunbathing in Florida.

And weirdly… I think people need to know about this.

Even if only my mom and two friends read it, at least now they know.

Because these worms are already here in McHenry County, and most people still have no idea.

Every preserve, park, and dusk hunt I’ve done has revealed these little nightmares.

They continue to destroy soil structure, strip organic matter, and reproduce at a rate that feels genuinely apocalyptic once you start doing the math.

Their eggs survive winter.

Which means even after thousands removed, you start again next season.

That realization honestly changes something in you.

So I’ve decided to keep documenting it.

Field Notes from the Worm War.

Tonight’s score: TBD.

But fewer than last year.

And honestly?

I’m taking that as a win.

Because the more I talk to people, the more I realize most have never even heard of these worms until they’re already established in their soil.

But if they’re this active in one small yard in McHenry County… what happens when you scale that to parks, preserves, gardens, and hundreds of acres of farmland?

That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Not just my plants.

Not just my yard.

Our soil.

Our ecosystems.

Our farmers.