Children aren't the only thing that got in anyway

The other morning I woke up, came blindly down the hall still rubbing my eyes, got a drink of water, and went back to bed.

About an hour later the kids were up so I got up, went down the hall to get them some breakfast, and got stopped by Annie.

She was sitting on the living room floor. It's not where she was sitting that stopped me. It's what she said.

"Why is there a giant WORM in our living room?"

"WHAT!?!?!?"

That's me, in case you didn't know.

I stood, frozen to my place, 5 full feet from the offending creature that was wriggling on my carpet.

I wanted to scoop it up and throw it outside. I could not move.

I used to be the girl who would throw worms at people (namely Lisa) while we were weeding Dad's Eternal Garden. (It was eternal because the weeding never ended. In fact, my fingers keep making Freudian slips and typing WEDDING the garden. It's totally what it felt like)

I was NOT afraid of worms. Somewhere in the years after that, where I have not touched worms, I lost my ability to touch them. Darn.

Alex saw me standing there petrified and asked if I would like him to pick it up and put it outside.

"Yes, please" was my answer. What I wanted was to offer him $20 to get the !$%#( WORM out of my house!

So he did. It was that easy.

Now, I know we have a good amount of air that gets through around the doors and one window. Since I'm pretty sure worms cannot crawl up the building and get in the dryer vent, I'm assuming that is how it got in. The door, not the dryer vent.

BUT- It was still alive so it couldn't have been inside for very long, right?

And the cats didn't eat it. Of course this means nothing since our cats don't know they should eat other strange things and turn up their noses at even tuna.

But I would have expected them to have played with it had it been in very long.

But HOW did it get in? And WHY did it come in? And how can I make it NEVER happen again?