(Artwork and description by player Regina Carey)
 

Squigglers

Squigglers are long, fat borrowing worms. Found throughout Pallahade's Kingdom, they are more a persistent pest than any real benefit. They are found in any lose dirt in warmer climates. The only places they are not found are swamps, mountains, and wet lands. Squigglers are uniformly an orange brown in color. They have to small mandibles where their mouths are and on their other end, they have two eye shaped marks. Purely a defensive decoration, when their attacked by birds or other worm eating creatures, the larger animals often mistake the end with the eye decorations for the head. Once attacking the Squigglers worm's rear, the worm somehow manages to detach the last 1/2" of it's end from it's body and escapes relatively unharmed down it's borrow. The lost tail grows back within two months.

Blind, Squigglers can sense movement in the ground, and have excellent senses of smell to help them track down food. A Squigglers favorite foods seem to co-inside with human's favorite vegetables. And any garden will be attacked by the hungry Squigglers. Who use their mandibles to cut away and eat themselves into the vegetable before they start eating it from the inside out. Chianta adapted to life outside the mountains seem to find Squigglers a tasty treat, and any Chianta enthusiastically digging up the vegetable garden is a sure sign of these pets.

A Squiggler reaches a length of about 7". Having both male and female organs, each can fertilize their own eggs, which are usually laid and abandoned in garbage pits. Eggs are laid in Late Fall just before the winter freeze which usually kills most, or all, of the adults. Once hatched, the baby Squigglers are miniature versions of the adults, and just as voracious.