A busy mother found herself in hot water when she was cleaning her bathroom and stumbled upon something that had found its way inside her house. She moved the bathmat that had been on the floor in front of her shower and found a “nightmare” sight. The Queensland, Australia mother, Karyina, was horrified to find long, stringy, white-colored figures lurking beneath her bathmat in her bathroom, so she snapped a photo of the bizarre growths and uploaded it to the internet to see if anyone knew what she was dealing with.

At first, Karyina thought the long stringy things were worms hiding beneath the bathmat. Fortunately, they did not all suddenly start moving all at once, as that would have probably given the young mother a heart attack. Instead, the problem was something a bit easier to deal with once she knew what she had on her hands.

So what happened in this Queensland bathroom? Did some type of fungus grow beneath the bathmat? Was it a plant that had gotten under the mat and started growing despite being deprived of a source of light?

In reality, the problem was much simpler than it seemed. Karyina reported that her bathmat had simply melted to the tile floor and left behind rubber strands that looked a whole lot like living, squiggly worms. Once she figured out that she was dealing with pieces of rubber instead of living worms, she needed a different kind of help from people online – she wanted to know what she could do to clean up the mess and have her bathroom back to its spick and span appearance.

How would you deal with this?” she asked. “It’s from a bathmat melting into the floor; what can I use to get it off?”

The young Aussie mother tried to scrub the rubber residue away, but it simply would not come off that easily. Thankfully, there were a lot of people online who were offering ways to help. But some people could not get past how the rubber strands looked like squiggly worms.

“I thought that was f***ing worms – had a heart attack for a minute there,” said one woman.

“Did anyone else freak out thinking it was worms of some sort?!”

Another added, “Lord, I thought that was worms.”

Cleaning experts eventually advised the young mother to use “goo remover” like Orange Power Sticky Spot or Goo Dissolver, according to Daily Mail.

“Oh no, do yourself a favor, go to Bunnings and buy Goo remover. It’s bloody amazing on anything sticky! Especially that! Boiling hot water from the kettle should help.