Just after composing last night’s post, I noticed Midnite doing the bug-shuffle: an amusing and handy little dance in which she scurries around after whatever nocturnal insect has caught her attentions.  It’s incredibly helpful for a squeamish gal like me as I feel like she’s the Insect Police and I, the burly exterminator.

So I look down; there is a spider.  It’s big.  I get rid of it.

I look back to the computer to proofread… but alas…. what’s that I hear?  Another bug-shuffle?  I turn around to see… another spider!  So I get rid of it.

I start to swivel back to the computer, yet again, only to realize mid-swiv that this second spider was not the bug-shuffling instigator… Midnite is way over in the corner, peering behind one of my boxes… and she’snot just shuffling, she’s actually goddamn chattering!

“Oh, God.” I think, “What has she found now?”

I move the boxes… a nearly two-inch long centipede is dangling between the wall and off one the cardboard icebergs.  I immediately go into hyper girlie mode; my stomach twists, I pull my arms and legs into my body like a jacked up little manatee and I shriek! There is NO FRIGGIN’ WAY I’m reaching back there with a tissue and grabbing this thing.

It has girth.

So I scamper to the kitchen, toes curled, teeth clenched, and body twitching.  I grab about two dozen paper towels (or three) and I grab a cat stick from the kitty-toy pile in order to knock this beast from it’s perch.

I get back into my office, I peer over the cliff of boxes, hands shaking…

The fucker is GONE.

Commence “Panic Dance” #2 – hands tucked, neck tight, eyes bulging…

Where the fuck is it?!

I carefully tip each box on its axis before lifting it to the floor.  I reach the bottom of the stack thinking maybe it fell and scurried beneath the bottom-most box…

No dice.

Then it hits me:  What if it got inside one of the boxes? ACK!!!  Even worse:  What if it got inside one of the boxes and it is pregnant with little centipede babies and it births them and I come in here on Saturday, or Sunday, or any future goddamn day, and they are EVERYWHERE?

DOUBLE FRIGGIN ACK!!!!!

I start meticulously lifting lids in the hopes of finding it.  Nada. Zip. Zilch.  The Centipede From Hell is loose in my office.  It could be planning it’s monster-birth-attack right this moment.  Watching me.  Plotting my torture and panic.

I tell myself to calm down, to breathe.

Midnite trots back in.  She senses my distress.  She starts sniffing.  I watch her lay down next to one of the boxes I already examined and paw at its base.  I life the box and VOILA.  That squirmy, fat-ass bastard comes tumbling from inside the lid.  But do I leap into action?

No.

I jump back and squeal.

Again.

This thing is HUGE!

I grab the paper towels and commence to chasing it around a roughly 1 foot patch of floor between the rug, the box, the cat, and my godammn toes.  This thing has speed, agility, and a strong will to live.  I smash it two, three, four wimpy times, each time puling my arm back to my side like a yo-yo, desperately clutchingthe paper towel like a shield, until finally I managed to do a little damage and drop the paper-towel-shield-wad in shock.

“Gross!”

The thing is writhing on the floor, draggin its ass, or its head, or whatever it was I just dented, around behind/in front of it.

“GROSS!”

It’s still moving too fast!

Finally I grab a boot.  An Ugg; one half of a one-hundred and eighty dollar purchase I made when Sallie Mae was still affording me the illusion of financial comfort.  I lay down the toe, atop the paper towel which stis atop the writihing centipede and press.  Hard.  But I don’t get all of it.  In my brain, everything I know about centipedes races to the forefront of my thoughts; it ain’t much.

“Centi-pede – centi- centi… that means a hundred… a century is 100 years.  This fucker has 100 legs.  Or is it body segments.  DAMNIT, you don’t know squat about these things, Tiffany!”

But I know a lizard tail will still move absent of its body, and a worm can regrow its body if cut in half… maybe a centipede needs to be squashed at every, damn, squirmy, segment.

A huge shiver runs through my body as I lift the boot, adjust aim, and press down again.  Atop the paper towel which sits atop the bug freaking me the eff out.

It finally stops moving.

I do the dance of grossed out victory and let out another giant girlie yelp.

I take the paper-towel clutched caracass out of my office and into the kitchen and stop.  What if its just playing dead? I decide this intruder needs to be flushed in order to prevent any return-from-the-dead type horror.  I head towards the bathroom.  My dad is sitting on the couch.  My girly-ass brain shouts “Shit!  If you knew he was up you could have asked him to slay the beast!”

I take the monster to the toilet.  I flush.  I immediately regret that I did not take a picture of the thing to show you just how horrible my foe was.  I return to the kitchen for the some 409 because there is centipede juice and a few of its legs stuck to the floor and I want them GONE, bitches!

Gross.

I spray librally, wipe ferociously, toss the evidence, and then wash, wash, scrub-a-dub-dub, my murderous little hands.

I sit down to recount the whole thing and now, as I type this, Midnite is asleep on his little chalk-outline.

My cat, the bug huntress.

(shiver)

And I, the squealing bug slayer.

Gross.