5.14.2008

Melissa vs. the Centipede

Last night, I'm sitting, minding my own business, watching some TV and chatting with my sister before bed. All of the sudden, a huge bug scurries across the carpet off to my right. I don't get a good look at it, but I see enough to know that it's definitely a bug, not a mouse, and that it's definitely not a cockroach. Don't get me wrong - I'm still freaked out, but anything is better than mice and roaches!

I shudder a bit, assume that he must've run into a crack in the wall, and that while many-legged bugs are kind of gross, there's nothing that he can do to hurt me. This calm bravado lasts for all of three minutes, and then I decide to lean over the edge of the couch just to make sure that he's gone. I look at the wall, and where the wall and floor meet, and at the molding, and there's no bug to be found. He must've made it into the wall, I think to myself, but I'll just move my backpack over to make sure.

THERE HE WAS. Just sitting under my bag. He's not at all scared of me - he just sits there. He sits there while I gape (a bug nearly 2 inches long, spots, lots of legs, not as spindly as I'd want a many-legged bug to be). And he sits there while I deduce that just squishing him with a tissue is NOT going to work (eew!), and while I decide that tossing tissues over him and smacking him with a shoe would be my best bet. And he sits there while I get up and find an appropriately heavy shoe and grab tissues, and he doesn't move as I approach or as I...ahem... take care of him. And its a GROSS sort of bug-squishing, complete with twitching disembodied legs. EW EW EW.

But I triumphed.

And then I google something along the lines of "big long bug many legs spots," only to find out that this guy was a centipede. Not just any centipede, but a house centipede. Apparently they are "good guys." But I'm sorry, I'm just not in a place in my life where I want to freely share my apartment with two-inch creepy crawlers.

Looking back, I realize that I squished a number of these guys back in the fall (apparently they show up indoors most often in the fall and in the spring), but none of them were this big or substantial. Smaller, skinner, more skittish - those others definitely felt less threatening. They were small, easily squishable, less robust - more like the top right-hand picture. But this guy last night was huge and scary and disgusting and much more reminiscent of the picture on the lower left.

Shudder. I may have triumphed, but my skin is still crawling...

3 comments:

  1. very impressive, melissa! we had those in our house in lombard, and i always made patrick squish them. i would rather share the room with one than have the "experience" of squishing it!

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  2. I am so glad I could share in the experience.

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