"Speak of the devil, and he appears."

Let's hope not.

This entry is dedicated to the fellow who creeps me out more than any other creature I've ever encountered: Scutigera coleoptrata, aka House Centipede.

If you are lucky, you've never actually seen this thing in your bathroom or your kitchen. If you are lucky, he lives in your house, eating your pesky bugs, but never showing himself to you. Apparently, I am not lucky.

Bugs and I don't mix. They give me chills, they make my stomach turn, they represent a primeval fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar. Even so, killing bugs is not really my thing (except silverfish).... but when I saw Satan, a mysterious and disgusting looking bug, on the wall next to my towel, I was overcome with terror. This never-before seen prehistoric creeper, with all of his legs and antennae, could not live in an apartment with me-- so I reached for the fly spray and I coated him. He fell off the wall and was dead almost instantly. Later, I felt a little bad about my decision to kill the intruder, but I also felt better knowing he wasn't in the bathroom with me anymore...whatever he was.

A couple weeks later, Alex woke me up and dragged me into the bathroom, half asleep, to see something... There he was, Satan 2, in the same place I found Satan. He was a little bigger than the first Satan, but he showed the same indifference that I'd seen weeks before. He didn't move away from us. He just sat there, watching us with his faceted eyes, I suppose. What was this creature? No time to find out. He had to be killed. Alex reached for a shoe, and somehow he missed the target. Satan 2 didn't wait around for the second blow and his certain death; he bolted out of the bathroom and scurried into the living room. He was so freaking fast, initially I wasn't even sure which direction he went, but Alex quickly located and squashed him. We were safe and could breathe a sigh of relief. I went back to bed, sick when I thought about how close the damn thing had been to my feet. It still makes me shudder; no telling how crazy I would have gone if he had actually touched me. AHHHH!!!! :O

Now that we had encountered and killed 2 Satans, I felt I needed to know what the damn thing was. It wasn't hard to find out; apparently this enigmatic bug freaks out a large portion of the population, and its image is all over the internet. AHH. Gross.

After doing a little bit of research, I found out that house centipedes aren't bad to have around, despite their alarming appearance. They eat bugs, and they don't really try to bother humans. I'm not sure I will ever be able to get close enough for a capture & release, but I truly hope, at the very least, that I have the wherewithal to coexist with these little freaky beasts.