Stop Bugging Me

I admit it. Certain bugs skeeve me out. Most spiders don't bother me. Only ones that are of gargantuan size and extra hairy with fangs (i.e. tarantulas, or while we're at it scorpions too). Daddy Long Legs, harmless. Those little yellowish clear spiders that you see on your windshield sometimes, not a problem. Crickets or grasshoppers, nadda. Earwigs, ehh, I can manage but it's pushing my threshold. But anything that is long, snakey and has a thousand creepy, feathery legs with feely antennaes (or heck, roaches too), call the exterminator and 911 b/c I'll be passed out.

The thing about the leggers, what I'll refer to the centipede species here, is that they're not like a regular spider. Spiders are just out there, making their presence known. Either hanging out in a web or just out in the open wandering about. They don't hide. Scare factor is very low for me on these. Now leggers, on the other, ahem, leg, hide. They're under rocks, under railings where you go to grab and whoops gotcha yourself a little extra there, under or in shoes, behind garbage cans in the bathroom etc. They end up in places where you just don't expect to see something creepy crawly. My fav is the bathroom garabage can. You bend down, slide it out of the corner and SURPRISE!

Now the thing is, once leggers are revealed they boogey away from you. So for me when I come across one of these leggers, it's extremely difficult to seek and destroy. Upon first sight, I jump back, my heart practically stops, I'm frozen in fear, sometimes I start crying just a little bit, & every hair on my body is erect. I'm lucky if I recover in enough time to locate something thick enough to smash it with (b/c just a tissue ain't gonna cut it for these big, thick, cruchy, liquidy beasts). So far I've managed to successfully kill all I have seen. Probably b/c the fear of them getting away and living somewhere else and reproducing in my home outweighs my initial shock. Whatever it is, it is still very unpleasant for me.

For example, I had close encounters of the buggy kind earlier this week. To the right is the enemy of which I speak. I have finally confirmed what this mutant is. It is indeed part of the centipede family. It's clever name, House Centipede. They can be up to 2 inches long (I've seen it). The website I found this at says: "they feed on small insects, insect larvae, and on spiders. Thus they are beneficial, though most homeowners take a different point-of-view and consider them a nuisance. Technically, the house centipede could bite, but it is considered harmless to people." Beneficial????? Considering I don't mind spiders and other insects, NO. There is nothing beneficial about these. I hate this bug and they all must die.

I have seen this "beneficial" bug on several occasions in my life. The time before this week was back in my old apartment. I lived there 2 years before spotting one. It was in my overcrowded closet. I was home alone, I took action. The second siting PE was home. Here he got to witness a side of me he's never seen. Me quivering and crying curled up on the couch screaming for him to "find it find it don't let it get away b/c we'll have to move and if you don't produce a carcass I won't believe you!" Yeah, that was fun.

Fast forward to earlier this week. It's 10pm, PE is sound asleep snoring away on the couch (Cubs were losing), and I'm upstairs in our bedroom trying to get my shit together for the press ok I had early the next morn. I'm standing in front of my closet mulling over what I should wear when something caught my eye by my feet. I look down and there the legger was scurrying across my floor heading for my closet full of all the nice cavey dark shoes. I'm frozen with fear. There is no way PE will wake up and get up here in time to address this for me. I snap out of it act fast and grab the first shoe I could and WHAM! But since this is carpet (the worst substrate to mash a bug on) I had to push down and really squish him. Then I stood there looking at my shoe. It's one of my favorite ones dammit, which means I won't be wearing it for awhile now.

Post mortem, I had to work myself up to cleaning up the remains. Again, a simple tissue will not suffice for the magnitude of mess. I grabbed not 1, not 2 but 3 paper towels. I can not stand to feel anything of what I am picking up. Now I know this is bad but when I was done, I flushed it all down the toilet. The toilet struggled but it all went down. I just couldn't risk tossing it in the garbage can. I mean what if it can regenerate or it has eggs that could still hatch?! Nooo way.

So now I'm all like ok, it's just one bug in one year. It's over. Breathe. It's late, I have to get up super early so it's time for bed. But instead of turning out the light and just crashing on the bed my paranoid self must check the bed, you know, for bed bugs. I violently shake the blanket & pillows. Satisfied and convinced we are now bug free, I walk around to the side of the bed to put the pillows back on and BAM! There it is. Yet another one of these freakish monsters, bigger then the first, crawling up my bedside wall. If I had been laying on the bed and rolled over to the edge I would have been face to feeler with it. I grabbed the same shoe and it shared the same fate as the first. Into the toilet it went but this time, it didn't flush so well. Yup, I clogged it with all my sheets of paper towel. This, I left for PE to deal with in the morning.

Now I'm wide awake and have come to the conclusion I will not be sleeping in my comfy bed in my bedroom. I can't sleep on the couch b/c PE is on it. So I again shake my blanket but this time not only did I shake the pillows, I took the pillows out of the cases and investigated the insides just to be sure. I have no other choice of where to sleep so I carried them into the second bedroom. I figured it's an inside room with only a skylight waaaay up there so it HAS to be bug free. Or at least the least likely to have bugs. I set up camp in the middle of the floor (away from the walls b/c look what I just found on one), I grab my cat and leave the light on b/c if I feel something crawling on me I want to see what it is right away and not fuss with getting up to tturn the light on and chancing whatever it is getting away. Well I still couldn't sleep so I tried to exercise a little. That didn't work. Needless to say I never fell asleep that night. Where I did end up falling asleep was in the car driving up to Milwaukee in the morning. Figures.

The twist to this story is that for the last 2 days I have slept on my couch. Not to mention always wearing some sort of shoe, shaking out shoes, pillows, clothes, towels anything & everything. But I refuse to sleep in my bed. I'm not even sure when I will be able to again. I just can't take knowing that if I fall asleep one of these leggers could be crawling around, maybe making it's way up to my ear to nest, without me knowing it. I guess I just need a few bug free days to work myself back up to sleeping in that bed. It makes me angry though b/c why couldn't this have happened in the living room?? You know a place where you are normally awake, not unconscious and slumbering away. I could have handled that. Just not in my bedroom.

P.S. These are the ONLY bugs I have ever seen indoors in my city living years. Figures it's the only bug that I simply can not tolerate.

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Also, I am now CPR certified which means I am fully prepared to start my EMT classes at the end of the month. I also finally told my family my plans. I was given a bunch of blank stares and "why don't you just go in to nursing instead?" I think they were just blindsided. It went as I expected. Very uncomfortable.