Battle With A Centipede!

Most of the time, I love living on a tropical Island. I love the coconut trees swaying in the sultry breezes, the smell of the ocean in the morning, and the markets full of people selling their wares of increasingly familiar produce. Sometimes, however, the local wildlife can make me wish for a safer place to hang my hat.

Last night as my wife and I prepared to go to bed, she sent me into the next room to get a sheet for the bed. Well, this may not sound like a dangerous mission to you, but here, the unexpected is to be expected (yeah don't try to figure that out, it is a headache-inducing way of thinking)!

So passing through the dimly lit living room to turn on the overhead lights, I see something on the floor. My mind just goes to the most obvious and says it's a piece of paper or something that can be picked up tomorrow. I turn on the kitchen light and pass back by the object in question, not really looking at it. As I enter the kitchen, a warning bell begins to go off in my mind and I look back just in time to see the innocent object begin to move across the floor!

A CENTIPEDE!!! Five inches of legs held together with menacing-looking body armor and little pinchers just searching for some available human flesh to torment. I hate those things like a pin cushion hates pins!

(The Enemy!)




Immediately, I go into battle mode, battle cry and all! I race into the kitchen to get the bug spray because there is no way I am getting close enough to that thing to kill it with a kitchen knife. Looking under the sink, I find only an empty can of bug spray. I would go and calmly ask my wife for another can if this had been a Sunday picnic, but it wasn't; it was war.

I yelled to Jen asking her If we have another can of spray, but, she didn't answer in that split second so I had to yell again. By this time, my wife is laughing at me as I go into my version of a war dance trying to get past the centipede who is blocking my way into the bedroom. The creature couldn't make up it's mind where it was going, so I had to leap over it to get to the room where the can of bug killer was.

Returning to the living room, I unleash a cloud of poison big enough to make the Geneva Convention shutter. Quickly, I leave the room, shutting the door behind me just in case anything survived. My wife was still laughing at me, even though I have just saved her life! Then my mind began to wonder just how the thing had gotten in, and not coming up with any answers, I switch to offense mode and begin to spray poison into every nook and cranny in our room, making sure there are more of these creatures lurking about.

Well, I guess all is well that ends well. I fought off the wild life without any outward scars and saved the night. My wife was so proud of me too; I could tell by the tears of joy welling up in her eyes - or maybe it was from laughing so hard. I choose to believe the former.

With the enemy dead, it was another one for the books. I did go into the living room later that night and spray the monster one more time, just for good measure. You say overkill, I say peace of mind is worth whatever you have to do!

(Proof that I won!)





Nathan