No, I don't....Jesus. H. Christ. Good for you that you love them, but Jesus. H. Christ.

No way I am clicking on that link. If I even see a picture of a centipede I'll be skittish and paranoid the rest of the day.

I read a little story on a forum about 2 months ago that's haunted me (really) ever since. A teenage girl wrote that she was laying on her sofa watching tv and she saw what she thought was a mouse run across the floor. She bolted upright and looked closer and it was an effing huge centipede. She screamed for a while and was totally freaked out and scared, and ran out of the room. Her parents were out and she was alone and the centipede seemed to have run away so she went back in and watched tv and forgot all about it.

Until she found it ON HER FUCKING SHOULDER.

ew ew fucking ew!

*runs around squealing, waves arms*

we have house centipedes here in colorado. they're huge, lightning fast, creepy and ew-ie. one of my coaching clients told a hilarious story one time about finding one in his attic (off-campus slumlord housing) when he was attempting to squirrel-proof up there... well actually the damn thing ran up his arm. he said it was the only time he could remember screaming like a little girl, and he claims he had to exercise considerable restraint not to strip naked and throw ALL his clothes in the dumpster outside their flat.

the poor kid seemed somewhat insulted that i couldn't help giggling hysterically at this scenario...

I was telling jonmc & Pips, last time I was on the porch, about my stint as an exterminator's assistant, and how I would lift up sewer caps to a community septic system, and he would spray any cockroaches that were inside. Most of the sewer caps revealed nothing, but the ones that did hide cockroaches contained thousands of them, all over, and they clung to the inside of the sewer cap in a thick layer of movement, and scores of them would crawl up my arms and into my sleeves with great urgency as my boss reached in and sprayed them with liquid death; since he was reaching into the tunnel I couldn't just freak out and drop the lid, so I just freaked out and held the lid until he shouted, "Clear!" and then I tore my shirt off and slapped the bugs off me. Cockroaches still wig me out a little.

But somehow, because of this, other bugs are generally unsurprising and not particularly gross, and what's more, I don't feel particularly compelled to kill them.

Unless you've had a hundred-odd cockroaches crawl into your shirt, you can't imagine it.

Gah gah gah gaahhhhhhhhhhh. There was a centipede in my bathtub this morning--fortunately I saw it before stepping in in my half-awake state to shower. I rinsed that bad boy down the drain with about seventeen gallons of scalding hot water. Again I say -- GAAAHHHHHHH.

The only bugs that really freak me out are house centipedes. There's no way I'm clicking on lfr's link!

I can see getting into the big ones, though.

But that footage was terrible! Jerky all over the place!