Don’t stop to smell the flowers. 1894.

This is an interesting story. A sneezy New Zealand girl in 1894 spent several days ejecting worms through her nose. Ick.

Warwick Examiner and Times 19 Dec 1894 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article82229262

These worms were identified as common earthworms and it was suggested that their eggs had entered her nose when she was smelling some flowers. Hmm..

I usually love the explanations people come up with when faced with the unexpected but this one suggesting she sniffed worm babies off flowers… Really? Surely that would stretch the credulity of anyone who had ever looked at a flower before!

I have sniffed lots of flowers and seen a lot of worms, they are never in the same place at the same time. Generally the worms are not found at the flowery end of a plant, are they? It would make things easier for the birds if they were though!

I suspect that they were actually a kind of parasitic worm that looked like a garden variety worm. I had a quick google and found a few that you could mistake for earthworms if you wanted to, none of them were coming out of someones head though.

I could post a link but then I would be denying you the joy of finding them for yourself, so, off you go. What? You’re going to take my word for it? Don’t blame you 🙂