New project: Garage siding

It’s time for a new project. This time: new siding for a very old garage.

First, you have to cut all the vegetation to get to the rotted and termite-eaten garage, all the time watching for interesting little creatures that live there in relative peace—until now!

Critter number 1
I knew this lady lived close by because I had recently seen her inside the garage. At that time, I left her alone.

Today I found her again on a piece of plywood I removed. I took several pictures, then killed her. Cruel? Not really. I didn’t need to be working in the proximity of a fat black widow spider. Also, she had already killed her husband.

Critter number 2
These things always interest me because they look like something from a scary movie. This one was quite long, maybe 18 inches or so. Or maybe it was just stretched out after I started moving it around for photos. After the photo session, I moved him (her?) to a safe location.

It’s a wormlike creature called a Land Planarian or an Arrowhead Flatworm. Note its head at the upper left. It’s slimy and sticky, like a slug.

Best of all, its mouth is halfway down the underside of its body, and its mouth also serves as its anus. Talk about a foul-mouthed creature. If that’s not disgusting enough, it eats earthworms by lying atop the worm and letting its sticky mucus adhere the worm to the ground. Then out of the Planarian’s mouth (or anus) comes a pharynx that sucks the bodily fluids from the poor earthworm. “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

Just so you feel better, they are not harmful to humans or plants, but are “a nuisance in the southern United States.” But I’ll bet earthworms the world over consider them a nuisance.

Here’s a wonderful and entertaining video showing a Valdosta-based Planarian eating an innocent earthworm. It’s just another reason you shouldn’t live in south Georgia.