Snake surprise!
Ha-ha, that’s exactly the image I thought of posting here.
I saw a big ol’ centipede like the OP’s once during a hike. I’d been resting at a particularly appealing spot, on some rocks surrounded by undergrowth. Just as I got up, I saw the back part of the critter scuttle under some bushes. I guess it’d been there the whole time and I hadn’t noticed it. The thing is, just seconds before, I’d been thinking it’d be an ideal place to sleep under the stars, without a tent or anything.
Ive seen those centipedes a lot on nature tv shows (we call them Skolopender in Norway), and i was under the impression that they are very venomous? Not safe to hold in your han? Got some big fangs in any case… shudder
Yeah, those scare me. I’m pretty sure i could take on the centipede and win. (Quite likely with the stuff or a towel or newspaper.) Not so sure about the crabs.
I understand the crabs are good to eat, though.
Didn’t something like that seize a bag of dog food and then a bag boy in one of those Stephen King movies?
Good god. There are few critters that give me the heebie-jeebies, and those giant centipedes are one of them. They’re hideously ugly, and venomous to boot.
I like all kinds of spiders, snakes, crabs, and assorted bugs, but I can’t abide a centipede. Even the little harmless house centipedes make me shudder.
I think your kids had the right idea.
What did you name it? Is it a boy centipede or a girl centipede? What do you feed it? What is its favorite centipede treat?
What’s up with the one deformed leg on the left side right about in the middle? Do you think it was born that way or do you think is it the result of an injury or disease?
@Cervaise: Great story. How old are the girls?
Around here we have many millipedes. They’re 1 to 1-1/2" long and sorta cute rather than fearsome. The legs look more like busily moving hair than something jointed and spiky and alien. It’s fun to watch the waves of leg motion flow one way while the critter is moving the other way. Oddly hypnotic.
I recall @CairoCarol once regaled us with a tale of a coconut crab that had taken up residence someplace in their kitchen in Indonesia(?). Going to sleep with it on the loose in the house seemed … unwise.
They enlisted local help to eventually find and extract it from the heat exchanger coils behind their fridge. Apparently the crab liked the warmth back there and did not much want to leave that spot. IIRC she said it was delicious later.
The nature of nearly everyone’s instinctive reactions to creepy crawlies really convinces me that way back when all mammals were little field mouse / shrew-like things, it was burned into the core circuits of our then-primitive brains that all manner of arthropods are fearsome predators much larger and more dangerous than we. The fact 6-foot scorpions used to inhabit much of Earth’s land surface would sure give ancient mouse-me pause.
Anyhow, to this day, IMO deep in the innards of our human brain is that vestigial bit from our days as shrews that screams “Run away, run away! We’re about to be eaten!” Our much later much larger human cerebral cortex can usually override the ancient impulse. Usually.
I recall reading a quote from the 1990s Guinness Book of World Records that a certain South American giant centipede had a bite so agonizing that a victim once plunged his bitten hand into a nearby cauldron of boiling water because the scalding sensation was preferable to the venom pain.
I have a real dislike of centipedes, probably because of the creepy way they move. I’m impressed with how you handled the bug, and the scared daughters. Well done, @Cervaise
Found this guy in my hotel room in Tanzania:
Sweet fuck what a fucking thing to see in reality inside a metal cage, let alone ‘scuttling across the floor’
That centipede is pretty scary alright, but what a marvelous creature it is. In a strange, creepy sort of way it’s quite beautiful. Being an Amazonian type, does it qualify for Prime shipping? 
Wow. That would totally have made my trip…if I had found it out in nature. In my vacation house on the other hand, I’d be sleeping nervously 
. I successfully desensitized myself to most bugs decades ago taking entomology classes, but the wariness around the fast-moving biters has never truly gone away.
You have an impressive memory, as your description is largely accurate. It was in Micronesia, and when we went to bed that night, the crab was safely (or so we thought) restrained in a corrugated cardboard box.
When we descended to the kitchen the next morning, we found a ripped open box with no crab inside. My first reaction was to look around frantically for our two cats. They were perched atop the kitchen cabinets, looking deeply affronted.
The picture of the giant centipede is something I dearly wish I could unsee. If I had actually experienced it I would undoubtedly need even more alcohol than I normally do! 
I noticed that. It was a lost leg, regenerated in a later molt. Arthropods can do that.
You can hug him and squeeze him and call him George.
9 and 12, both going on 17.