I was once in the dining room of a house I lived in. I heard “scuffle-scuffle” on the linoleum. I looked down and saw the largest scorpion I’d ever seen. :eek: My ex picked up the thing with barbecue tongs and dropped it into a waiting jar of rubbing alcohol. I had the pickled scorpion for a few years before I finally threw it out.
Robin
STAY OFF MY FOOT!!!
whew
Now that I have THAT out of my system…
I used to have to regularly pick drowned rats out of the stock tank so rodents don’t bother me, but feeling a mild tickle and looking down to see a mouse/mole/vole on my toe was a bit shocking.
And yojimboguy? You brought up a particularly bad memory of Hawai’ian centipedes. For that I curse you soundly.
shudder
One night last year I fell asleep on the couch in the living room. I woke up to find a small roach crawling across my arm. I havent slept up here since.
I was going to bump the “when does it suck to be a man” thread for this weekends activities, but this will work just as well, even better:
This weekend I was cleaning up the clothes off of my floor, and low and behold, there was a mouse under my stuff. I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or dead. Just the sight startled me, as I didn’t know I had a roommate. Now, had there been someone else in the room, my macho-ism would have kicked in and it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I was alone, so I didn’t have to impress anybody.
I promptly picked out my dust pan and touched it to the mouse as I jumped back about 2 yards. I laughed to myself as this happened, wishing I had set up the video camera, because I durn near flew away.
The mouse didn’t move, so I was able to scoop under him, put him in a cracker box, put that in the trash, quickly tie it, and run outside to put it in the garbage.
Now cockroaches, ooooo, when I first moved to Minneapolis, all I had was a box of clothes. No radio, no place to stay, had never been here, but was looking for opportunity, and the want ads seemed to suggest this was the place. I ended up as a caretaker for this apartment building. Since all I brought were clothes for interviews, and I had no bed, I would sleep on the floor, and wake up with those nasty huge cockroaches crawling all over me. I thought I had failed in my attempt to establish myself, and just as I was about to admit defeat and move back in with either my parents or grandma, I got a call for a REAL job, and got out of that apartment. Oh, that was bad, real bad. I don’t know how I made it through those 2 weeks.
In fact, these roaches were so bad that bug bombs didn’t kill 'em, and when I cleaned out an apartment of a resident who left, there were roaches living in the refridgerator. How that worked out, I’ll never know.
In college my roommate and I got a room in a dorm that contained a dining hall, not realized the recipe for vermin disaster we has unwittingly subscribed to. Rodent life was periodically spotted in hallways and such, but never really interfered with one’s day-to-day student existence. In a corner of the room we’d set up a kind of nook with a small television, chair, and two folding mattresses we piled on top of each other in a sort of chaise longue. We began to notice a strong aroma coming from the heating vent near the nook, and believing that it was a dead rodent trapped in the vent, we began to move the furniture from the area around the vent so cleaning people could get in there and take care of it. I unfolded the mattresses, and found, crushed beneath them like the hapless legume in the Princess and the Pea, a decomposing mouse. It was only after we threw the befouled mattresses out that I realized someone had sat on the poor thing to kill it.
OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. I have chills up and down my back about that. You are the bravest soul I have ever met. If that ever happened to me, I would have screamed and vomited and never go near that city again. shudders omg omg I will never sleep on the floor or have my feet on the ground again.
My stories:
When we first moved in this house, it was like the family before us bred spiders. shudders they were EVERYWHERE! And I am like Ron Weasly in Harry Potter. I CANNOT stand spiders. Last week I woke up with a big old spider bite on my hand! I woke up with this red, itchy, swollen, bump with 2 bite marks on it. Grossed and freaked me out alright. I still don’t know where the damn spider is. shudders
Rodents and reptiles on me don’t bother me in the least. Shake them off and go on my way.
But bugs . . . shudder I can’t even look at the millipede in the local pet store without feeling it crawl across the back of my neck, and that makes me quesy. (I wish for a pukey smilie.)
About eight years ago, my grandparents moved to another city for about a year so my grandmother could get dialysis. (Before our hospital got a dialysis unit. My grandmother has since passed away.) So I looked after their house and dog for them. (And I’m still here. 
)
There was a bag of sunflower seeds in the garage, and some mice managed to find it and get it open. Unfortunately, I would often leave the door to the garage open while I was working in there or taking in wood for the fireplace. So, two mice managed to sneak into the house.
Since my grandparents had taken most of the furniture with them when they left, the place was pretty sparse. In the living room, they left the old couch and reclining chair, and I added a television and an old standing lamp. (Which would be the only light in the room).
Anyhoo, sitting in the chair, watching television in the dark one night, I suddenly see, out of the corner of my eye, a small shadow zip across the entrance to the kitchen towards the couch. It surprised me, but then I thought that it was just a shadow, caused by lights coming from the road.
Then, I see it again, and realize that it’s more than a shadow. Chum, a sheltie, noticed it then, as well. So I got up, turned on the rather inadequate standing lamp, and got a flashlight. Looking behind the couch, I saw the interloper in all its furry glory. Actually, it was rather cute.
So, Chum and I set to work. I got an ice-cream container and pulled the couch out from the wall. Chum rooted it out wherever it tried to hide, but we quickly cornered it in the kitchen and I got it in the container. It didn’t take long at all. I set it free in the woods out back.
The second mouse, however, was another story. Again, once it made itself known, Chum and I set to work. This b*stard, however, wouldn’t cooperate. It refused to cower in a corner or stay in one place long enough for me to get in position to catch it. And Chum was really getting pissed.
I had chased it until the sun was coming up, so I gave up and went to bed until noon. After I got up, Chum and I searched the house, but couldn’t find it. We knew it hadn’t left, though. Since it had had such an attitude (the first mouse was cute; this one looked like a punk), and hadn’t cooperated with my attempts to bring it in the night before, I deemed it to be a hostile invader.
I only found one trap in the garage - the killing kind - but had asked my father to bring me some more as soon as he could. However, when I woke up the next day, Chum informed me that the invader has met its demise behind the couch where I had set the one trap.
Anyhoo…
Nowadays, if I’m sitting in front of my computer in the dark, and something hairy brushes my feet, I know it’s only my scrotum.
How on earth did this get bumped after a two-year hiatus?
Pretty simple - we have a newbie who’s reading everything.
Welcome, flamingbananas. Enjoy your stay here, but don’t scratch your “reply button” finger every time it itches, OK?
A couple of years ago, my wife was awake for around 48 hours. I don’t remember why. But, she was outside standing on the neighbors back porch talking. The neighbor has a table with an umbrella, and I guess the missus was right next to it.
She felt something on her foot, underneath the table, and without thinking drew back and kicked it - somehow her sleep deprived brain imagined it to be a dog urinating on her foot.
It turned out to be the neighbors 4-year-old daughter, dropping a small stream of sand, onto her foot underneath the table. She took the bootin’ right in the mouth, needed a few stitches, etc. It was a bad time all around.
The moral of the story: Always check…no, never kick…
Ahh forget it.
Thats not the case, actully. This link was in another thread, and I just happened to click on it. I don’t have the attention span to go back 2 years before 
