I’m pretty immune to fear when it comes to bugs, snakes, spiders, etc. I really like critters and I find most of them more interesting than frightening.
However, all bets are off when it comes to centipedes. We recently returned from Kaua’i, and I was speaking to a friend who lived there for a couple of years. He and I discussed the chicken problem on Kaua’i (which subject deserves a thread in its own right), and he said, “Yeah, well, at least they kept the centipede problem down.” “Centipedes?” I thought. “I didn’t see any.” So I Googled up Hawaiian centipede, and good lord amighty!
I didn’t know you guys in Hawaii had 6" biting, stinging centipedes. I’m glad I didn’t know when I was there. This is just about the only critter in the world to give me the heebie-jeebies. Apparently the buggers get into your house and into your bedclothes and everywhere, and they’re hard to kill. I didn’t have time to Google further, but I’m betting this is yet another introduced species.
But Hawaii is so gorgeous! Its palms, its beaches, its clear blue seas… you can’t let a little thing like 6-inch biting, stinging, crawly, slimy, icky centipedes slow you down!
A guy in the biology department had a terrarium in his offices with some big-ass millipedes. I stuck my head in and said, “Pardon me, but are those millipedes?”
And he said, “Yes! Wanna see!”
Being a geek, I said yes. Unfortunately, it turned out that he had about nine terraria in his offices, all stuffed full of creepy crawlies. He hauled out millipedes, small centipedes (he said he had some big ones at home, but their stings were very painful, and he only handled them with tongs), and Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and gave me a nice close-up view of them.
I managed not to flee, screeching “Eek! Eek! Eek!” down the hall, but I did keep my hands clasped behind my back as I politely inspected each beastie, lest he be tempted to say, “Wanna hold it???”
Millipedes are decidedly less scary than centipedes, for some reason. I was in the St. Loius Zoo in the insect house w/ my fiance, and an employee approached us holding a millipede. At first I was freaked out, but it was actually sort of cute. It stood up in his hands, almost like a little dog or something. I didn’t hold it, but I touched it, and it put many of it’s little legs on me. They didn’t feel gross, just kind of spiky.
However, I would never have let him near me had he been holding a centipede.
There’s another kind of centipede that is much scarier and more “evil”-looking. It has longer antennae than that guy in the picture, and much longer legs too. It is usually a brown-reddish color, from pictures I’ve seen.
Lotta meat on one o’ them. Run a skewer down the middle and plop it right on the barbeque. Skewer keeps it from curling into a ball. Little butter, little garlic. Body meat is tender, legs are crunchy. Wash down with Mexican beer.
I was gonna say it tastes like chicken, but it doesn’t. Tastes like centipede.
Here’s something to think about; Have a look at that 6-inch centipede “nursing” its young.
Now imagine it’s tonight and you’re going to bed. You get into your pyjamas or whatever, turn off the lights, and hop into bed. But what you didn’t know is that that mother centipede is in your bed, curled up with her hideous offspring. Your leg comes down on her and the babies, panicked, run in every direction, through your pyjamas, dozens of them all over you, down your legs, up your torso, in your crotch, their little legs running over your skin, and you slap at them but you can’t get them all, and some are coming up towards your FACE… and the mother clenches onto you with all her strength, and she bites, and bites, and bites.
Lou, do you mean a common house centipede? They’re the buggers that have long crickety legs, and can move at mach 10. The Lissar household refers to them as demon bugs. They can get up to three inches long in Canada, which is damn big if you count the huge legs. I’m not going to link it an image, because they scare me too much. Someone else can.
They are, in my opinion, far more freakig scary even than that horrible thing.
A friend’s girlfriend lives in Hawaii. I will specifically ask her not to bring any interesting stowaways when she visits.
I TOLD you centipedes were scarier than millipedes! See, it’s like little pet! Hehehe…I noticed while googling both centipedes and millipedes that while almost no pictures showed a person holding a centipede, almost all of the millipede pics had a person in them.
The centipedes did not slow me down. On more than one occasion those horrors caused me to increase my speed significantly. I clearly recall standing on the sofa at 2am screaming at the top of my lungs for my husband to get downstairs and get this thing before it hurt one of the cats.
You’re right, badbadrubberpiggy, millipedes just don’t have the terror factor that centipedes have. They just look like an elongated sow-bug, and as far as I know, they’re vegetarians.
That centipede picture that Hal Briston posted is going to give me screaming fits in the middle of the night. They’d be bad enough if they were merely ugly as sin, but when you add in the painful venomous bite, you just have to ask why such hideous things exist.
Someday, I’m going to start a thread requesting people’s favorite “sounds very odd when read out-of-context” sentence. That one right there is my choice.
