I think they are worse than cockroaches, except that they eat cockroaches…so since there is a fair amount of ‘floor chow’ (hey, I live with a small constantly grazing child and I sure as hell did not ask for carpet) in my house at any given time, I might be grateful that we are hosting about 20 centipedes per one that I see!
About this time last year, my in-laws moved out of their house and off to Virginia Beach…we liked their house as much as (probably better than) our house at the time. We decided to sell our house and move into their house. On the last morning that they were in their house and the day before we started cleaning it out, my mother-in-law called and told me that she had seen some weird spider looking thing crawl through the kitchen window…no big deal I figured…I mean I had just conquered my fear of millipedes at the Carnegie Science Centre — thank you animal ambassador program!
We cleaned the house and moved in…it wasn’t until about two or two and a half months later that we started to see those ‘weird spider looking things’…oh, my! First, I conquer my fear of millipedes (which turn out to be awesome for gardens and no threat at all) and now and I am faced with creepy, sinister looking, fast moving and impossible to see on this god-forsaken carpet that my in-laws HAD to get and are rather attached to (even though they don’t live here)!
Well, Fall turned into Winter and I didn’t see anymore. Spring came around this year and I saw one. By this time, I knew that they were centipedes and I assumed the worse without much research…reminiscent of my fear of millipedes. I have seen 8 and killed 6 of them…Now, I am DREADING Summer. I am dreading the fact that I can NOT rid my home of these scary looking things — there just isn’t a way. Don’t believe exterminators who tell you that they can rid your house…they will only dump tons of scary chemicals on your life and NOT get rid of these critters — at best they’ll seem to retreat for no more than a month at most.
Thankfully my child, cats, food, husband and I are all safe — for the most part. Apparently, usually, centipedes fangs are too small or weak to puncture our skin, but if one does manage to do so, it would be like being stung by a bee. Well, considering that I am allergic to bees and do not know my reaction to centipede venom, I am rather nonplussed by the thought of being bitten. Of course, I have been reassured by many kind folks that I shouldn’t worry about being bitten. HA!
If you’d like to find out more about these ‘fantastic’ critters and all the wonderful things they do for you, while scaring the shit out of most people — when they run across their feet while trying to do laundry in the basement — you can visit these two sites and plenty others out there just by ‘googl-ing’ centipede.
I wonder if we should have stuck with our old house, which I am sure had centipedes, but they weren’t making their presence known.
