The longest and oldest worm in the world

The other night I was just taking a few scraps of food down to the bird table so that the dawn chorus would have something for their early morning breakfast when I saw a worm on the path. It appeared to extend to some eighteen inches or possibly more. It had been raining and there were still the odd drop or two coming down but I raced back into the house to grab a camera – any camera – before it slithered away between the slabs. Never had I seen a worm as long as this it must be a great, great, great grandfather worm. It was black outside so I couldn’t see where I was aiming the camera. I just put it onto flash and clicked a few times in the hope of one of the pictures being reasonably visible. All at once the worm began to slither between two of the slabs. I grabbed a torch … the worm, it seemed had attached itself to a piece of grass stem that had turned brown – so rather than a really long, long worm it was in fact an ordinary worm and certainly not the longest and oldest worm in the world.

When I was a little girl my father would often say to me “Never assume that something is as it first appears it is always wise to stop and take a second look!” He certainly proved himself right with this little creature, didn’t he?

The longest and oldest worm in the world