Because "nematode parasite" was #4 search term for last week: Parasitology blogging (Angel Bottom-streamer edition)

Keith Laumer calls our attention to the Womboid Menace:*

This Womboid sounds like some form of nematode, though Dracunculus medinensis is not normally so lively. Another Kiwi reckons it could be some member of the Nematomorpha phylum but it behooves me** to point out that Gordian worms are only known to parasitise anthropod hosts.

Whatever the nature of the infestation, Jennifer observes that it can also affect angels:***
Though of course these could be rebel angels, in which case there might be some other reason why streamers are emerging from their bottoms, as was documented by Robertson Davies in his reconstruction of the death of Professor Urky McVarish:

“Ah, the Pink Ribbon Murder,” said Ludlow, the law don. “What did you make of that, Judge?”

“I didn’t make much of it,” said Mr. Justice Northmore. “I read everything that appeared in all three papers, and the accounts were so muddled and contradictory that I couldn’t be sure of anything except that a professor had been murdered under somewhat imaginative circumstances. I wish it had come to trial, so we could have got to the bottom of it—”

Roberta Burns snorted. The Warden raised his eyebrows.

“So that we could have found out the truth about the ten feet of pink ribbon that were concealed in the rectum of the body. Now why would anybody want to do that?”

The moral lesson I took home from Rebel Angels is that if one's preferred pathway to orgasm consists of a ritualised cos-play culminating when the partner removes a simulated tapeworm from one's anus, remunerate the partner properly.

Coming back to nematode infestations:
Your friends are all "No, elephantiasis has lost its social stigma, nothing to be ashamed of, people are cool. You'll be welcome at the Hallowe'en party, just dress your grotesquely enlarged scrotum as Groucho Marx." But if they're not embarrassed to be seen with you, WHY ARE THEY ALL WEARING RACCOON MASKS?

* A reviewer points out that if the plot of a science-fiction novel involves expeditions to Antarctica discovering the city of a long-vanished technologically-advanced civilisation, the erstwhile occupants should AT LEAST AS COOL as flying echinoderm Elder Things. It is anti-climactic if they turn out to be merely a vanished race of humans who didn't have the sense to think "Oh, the climate is changing and our homeland is becoming uninhabitable, best we use our advanced technology and do something about it". Even if their demise allowed the escape of the worm-like brain-jacking aliens from under the city.

** Me A friend, behooved.

*** You know who else liked painting delapidated brickwork and night skies?