A friend of mine from San Diego sent me some pictures from a weird animal that he keeps finding inside his house.It does not look like a living organism!! (moves very slowly BTW - a few mm an hour and it has a small trunk that it seems to use for moving around - visible in the third pic)

I don't know! But I'm pretty sure that's not a worm. Maybe it's a bug or something. Tell him not to try to touch it, because it might be dangerous!
Good Luck

Pure speculation on my part, but it might be the larva of some type of an insect or similar critter, and the body looks in the pictures like it might be a casing made up of, for example, earth, leaf particles, sand etc.

How does it move? Legs?

Again, I'm just guessing.

According to Dr. Hedin, this is a case-bearing clothes moth larvae (= caterpillars), Family Tineidae.

See additional information: http://bugguide.net/node/view/24481/bgimage

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Originally Posted by askme236

According to Dr. Hedin, this is a case-bearing clothes moth larvae (= caterpillars), Family Tineidae.

See additional information: Family Tineidae - Clothes Moths - BugGuide.Net

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Have your friend check everything he has that is made from wool or silk. If he keeps finding larvae then there have been eggs laid and the odds are something is damaged.

That is the larval stage of a moth called the household casebearer, also called the plaster bagworm, scientific name = Phereoeca uterella . It is not a true bagworm, hence the effort to emphasize the name household casebearer. The larva basically adds dust to its silk enclosure in which it hides. It feeds on spider webs and is known to feed on wool. A vacuum cleaner is the best management method on this species and on the spider webs it feeds upon.

Visit this website, household casebearer - household casebearer - Phereoeca uterella WalsinghamWalsingham for more information.

Also check out Tinea pellionella

Scroll down to where the larva is given a choice of textiles or oatmeal and chooses oatmeal.

We have them, I thought they were the cases of dead silverfish - until tonight. My son and I took a good look at them and saw that they were moving - very creepy. We looked them up online (actually, we raced - my son on his computer and I on mine) and my son found them - they do appear to be a type of case bearing moth larvae - the bag worm is not quite right though. Those look like tubes, while these are almost completely flat. The only time I've noticed them is when we run our clothes dryer - it vents onto our patio - this makes total sense since these larvae eat cloth, feathers and hair - we have a dog and cat, a down comforter and pillows -so there are always feathers and pet hair in with our dryer lint - they must hang out in the vent tube.