We have oddles of these cute little millipede things here. They’re about the color and shape of earthworms, sorta brick red. The babies are tiny (of course) and the really big ones are about 2" long. Most are more like 1 to 1-1/2". Big enough to see easily, but not big enough to be scary even for kids. In all they’re pretty benign little brown tubes.
But they each have about 1 zillion little hairlike legs that make the most fascinating wave motion as they walk. The critter progresses forwards and density waves of legs also progress forwards.
It’s the same weird effect as a Michael Jackson Moonwalk where his legs appear to be walking forwards while his whole body is moving backwards. But inversed. The overall effect of the legs looks like they should be propelling the critter backwards but instead it’s going forwards. Since you can’t tell one end from the other to begin with, it’s odd looking to say the least.
Around here, the uninitiated call the OP’s creature a silverfish also…
But they are wrong, the OP’s centipede and the silverfish are two different beasts.
That was such a delightfully silly movie. I wonder if J.K. Rowling was subconsciously thinking of the denouement scene in this when she came up with boggart elimination techniques…
A couple of years ago I had a millipede boom–whenever it rained (and it was a very rainy summer) and I went outside at night I’d see dozens if not hundreds of them crawling around on the outside walls of my house. It all led to the day I found a writhing clump of them on my front porch. I scooped them up and moved them away from the house. I haven’t seen a significant number of them sense then, so it must have been most of the population gathered in that clump.
Though I’m a northwest native, the only time I’ve experienced those insects has been when visiting my mom’s family in Ohio (the Columbus area). So I’m used to calling them lightning bugs because that’s what they called them.
Plus I’m worried if I call them fireflies that Fox will cancel them and I won’t be able to enjoy them anymore.
You know, it was only a week or two ago–while browsing one of the old SD “stuff you are surprised people don’t know” threads–that I learned that firebugs/lightning flies aren’t found in the western US. I know from experience that they are found in the east, I know from Japanese media that they are in Japan, I sort of just assumed that they were found everywhere in between (at least, in the areas not too hot or too dry.) Tons of them around here this time of year.
