Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Scutigera: My Friend















First, some background:
About four months ago, I awoke in a most odd way. I slapped my face as hard as I could, while I was still asleep. This awoke me from my dream. Why did I slap my face? Well, I was in a groggy state, having just awoke, and I thought I had felt a tickle on my face, and naturally, I assumed that my fear had truly occured, and a spider had been crawling on my face. I probably would have forgotten about this by now, and just passed it off to a bad dream that made me believe a spider had been on my face, except that when I looked at my hand, a spider leg was on it. This leg was undeniably one that belonged to a spider, and I was quite scared that I may have upset him now (I know I would be upset if someone whacked my leg off!). I looked around without moving, hoping to see where the spider was. . .but I couldn't see anything. So, I slowly got out of bed, moving only the covers. I looked back at the bed, and saw no spider. I was about to leave, and get on with my day, when I decided to shake things up a bit, literally. I shook the covers, in fear that something would pop out and run up my leg. Nothing did. Finally, I grabbed my pillow, and shook it. Well, this is where I get freaked out, because out from under the pillow streaks this brown insect-looking creature. I thought it had a hundred legs, it was moving so fast. It ran right under the covers. Well, I knew I couldn't sleep in that bed ever again until I knew that that creature was dead and wasn't going to crawl all over me in my sleep. So, I grabbed a sunday school lesson manual (the closest hard object I could find) and held it like a racquet. I quickly threw the covers back, and swatted the racquet down hard. I hit it square, but, due to the softness of the mattress, the spider was not killed, and only paused briefly before running away down the side of the bed (on the side next to the wall). I was very afraid now, because not only is this spider pissed off at me for losing a leg, but now he's been swatted and is probably leaking some sort of goo everywhere he goes. I thought he probably hadn't run far off, and I could coax him back onto the bed. I pulled gently at the mattress cover, and sure enough, up he came. I hammered the lesson manual down on him. This time, I didn't stop. I swatted again, and again, and again, until I had pulverized him, and I knew he was dead.

Note: Don't you find it odd that I consistently refer to scary spiders and insects as 'he'? I do.

Now, the update:
So, a few days ago, I walk into my bathroom and see the exact same type of creature, hanging out on the wall behind the toilet. It wasn't moving, which was shocking, considering how fast his counterpart had darted off the bed. I ran into my kitchen and grabbed a small tupperware container (not yours, GM ... unfortunately, I still don't know where that is ...). With this, I attempted to capture the insect. As I inched close to it, though, it fell right down to the floor and started to scurry away. I quickly clamped the tupperware over him, coaxed him into crawling up the side of the container, turned it around quickly and shut the lid. I then threw that into the freezer, hoping to take it to the entomology room in the Bean Museum for identification.

This proved to be unnecessary, however. A simple email to the curator of the insect collection describing my catch was sufficient for him to give me the exact species name. Scutigera coleoptrata. Commonly known as the
House Centipede. So, after all this time, the mystery is solved. That's what the scary creature was that awoke me in the night so long ago. And, another mystery solved: it states, "In an act of defense, when one of the house centipede's legs is held down, it drops that leg in hopes that the attacker will be distracted by the temporarily twitching appendage." Well, it's leg didn't deter me from smashing it to death, but, it sure gave a valiant effort.

I am very impressed by my friend Scutigera. He eats the spiders that I hate so much. He wasn't on my bed that night to bother me, he was simply ridding my sheets of bedbugs. Scutigera is one of the most beneficial creatures that I could have residing in my room, even if he is nasty looking. Looks can be deceiving: that's the lesson to be learned here. Remember it.

8 comments:

John D. Moore said...

But still, it's revolting. Disgusting. Nasty. And, for me, that far outweighs pretty much everything else. Seriously, as soon as the picture loaded, I had my hand hovering in front of the monitor (couldn't very well put my hand on the image) so I couldn't see the little bugger.

Ew.

Yarjka said...

Yes, I'm still wavering on whether I'd rather have this guy on me than a spider. I mean, it moved so darn fast, it's scary. And oh so many legs...

Claire said...

I kinda think it's funny that your that creeped out by creepers. I haven't been scared of creeping insects since I left scorpions behind.

That being said, can you bring over one of your new friends because I found a spider in my room the other night.

Claire said...

Oh, and go to postsecret.blogspot.com and check out the 8th one down.

Th. said...

.

I thought you gnomes where friends even to the spiders.

Dinosaur Joe said...

I think I saw one of those in my house once. I didn't get a good glipse because it crawled under something. I decided to ignore it. Oh, and off subject, I probably should get a non-joke account to comment on blogs.

Yarjka said...

Joke account?! I thought you truly loved dinosaurs!! Oh, the agony.

You need a real blog - I would read it everyday (heck, I read your dinosaur one everyday).

Novel Concept said...

You know, I was wondering what that beastly bug was. Stephanie and I found one in our room this summer...yuck. So very many legs.