Earlier this week, I performed my daily inspection of the shower drain for house centipedes before removing my glasses. All was well. I took a nice leisurely shower, shut off the water, wrapped a towel around my head (shaking it out, a habit acquired after Jason discovered a live centipede in his towel one morning and relayed that info to me upstairs with a loud yell of surprise) and shut off the water.
There was a large hair clump near the drain. I bent down to remove it, when my early-morning brain synapses stepped up their game and said, “Whoa, wait a minute here.” I leaned over as far as possible and peered intently at the clump. It seemed unusally large, even for my hair-shedding head. In fact, there appeared to be legs, although some were not attached. Odd.
I darted out of the shower and grabbed my glasses. And sure enough, there was a large, mostly legless, mashed-up house centipede lying dead in the tub. I only hope its death was slow and painful and did not involve my feet.
Then last night, I was folding up our down comforter downstairs when I turned around and saw a large centipede in the middle of the living room carpet. “Gah!” I said, as I ran to grab reinforcements (Jason and a large wad of toilet paper). Jason grabbed the toilet paper and went to pick it up. “Thanks,” I said, then watched as he stood over the centipede, not moving. “What are you waiting for???” I said, starting to panic. He crouched over the centipede, still not taking action. “Be decisive!” I snapped, as he finally, gently covered the centipede with the toilet paper and then immediately opened his hand to look at it, a habit that drives me insane because on more than one occasion, his hippie gentler-than-thou approach has resulted in the escape of some grotesque insect that reports back to its revenge-seeking family.
Jason stood up and walked slowly toward me, a smirk on his face. And even before he opened up the toilet paper and threw it at my face, I knew what it was:
A feather from the comforter.
For the record, that feather looked exactly like a house centipede.
You know, minus the fact of actually being a centipede.
