Schoolchildren's lesson interrupted by worms falling from sky

Pupils at a Scottish school had to run for cover when it started raining worms during their PE lesson. Teacher David Crichton was leading a group of pupils playing football on an astroturf pitch at Galashiels Academy when dozens of the slimy creatures began plummeting from the sky. The second-year boys had to abandon their lesson as the earthworms fell during the bizarre incident.

David said the children had just completed their warm up when they began to hear "soft thudding" on the ground. The class then looked to the cloudless sky and saw worms falling on to them. The 26-year-old teacher said he was baffled by the unexplained incident. Later he and other teachers found more worms spread across a tennis court almost 100 yards away. David said: "We were out playing football and had just done our warm up and were about to start the next part of the lesson. We started hearing this wee thudding noise on the ground.



"There were about 20 worms already on the ground at this point. Then they just kept coming down. The kids were laughing but some were covering their heads and others were running for cover for a while. They just scattered to get out of the way." The bizarre occurrence took place at around 9.15am on Tuesday. The teacher then scooped up handfuls of the worms as proof they had landed on his class. David said he and his colleagues eventually found around 120 worms in total after checking the artificial football pitch and tennis courts.

"Everyone was having a laugh at me about it until they went out and saw for themselves. Everyone thought I was mad. They came back in and looked shocked. I spoke with the science department here but none of them had any explanation for it. One of them thought maybe it was a freak weather thing. But it was such a clear, calm day. And we are quite a bit away from any of the buildings so it's not like anyone could have been throwing them.”