Holy Moley! Solutions.......

#1. Scoop em up and sell them as bait
#2. Get a chicken to live in the garden, worms get eaten.
#3. Rototill the crap outa that soil!
#4. Buy bigger plants.

NightCrawlers will do so much more positive for the garden they are in compared to the harm they do.

As for them wrapping themselves around seedlings and pulling them into the soil, I'd have to see it to believe it. I've never seen that before and I have a ton of them in my garden.

They're worms, their life cycle are what makes healthy soil.

Also, red-breasted robins love them. If you have nightcrawlers, you'll have robins.

What sort of seedlings are being devoured by these mighty earthworms?

Nightcrawlers pull dead OM and seeds and the like into their burrows to decompose, but I've never heard of them pulling live plants into their burrows. I'm sure the County Extension would love to hear about it.

Dan

When we moved here, we had a similar 'invasion' of night crawlers - the things would leave a big enough hump of soil that it made walking on the lawn difficult, and when it rained, they would cover the sidewalk. It was interesting to watch them spread around the place, over the pond dam to the other side, moving about 20 feet a year.

They've all but disappeared now. They coincided with the years when I was getting huge amounts of horse manure for the gardens, and they loved that stuff.

Now, lots of worms, but I don't think I've seen one of these things in several years.

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. i will ask my neighbor tonight and post again. The chickens kind of went after everything so that didn't work out real well.
I think the seedlings are like lettuces and such. The manure question is a good one. Interesting how they could have gotten there. I read that earthworms only travel 1/2 mile per 100 years.
I wonder if they have asked County Extension, good question !!
Thanks so much, Jean in Mt

When I first read this post I thought that the original poster was mistaken. After doing a google search earthworms do apparently eat seeds and seedlings preferring legumes

Here is a link that might be useful: Earthworms AT BBC News

That is amazing!!! They do indeed eat very small plants. I've been watching nightcrawlers going on close to 40 years now, and I've never seen that before. But then again, I'm the type who would feel honored by the nightcrawlers eating my lettuce~~ SC