FLAT FOR RENT -- AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY

So we understand the explanation for how it got to Britain, but then what happened?

(Thanks to Julieta, and Russell Holly)

Comments

[crossgirl]

"He trapped the 9-inch-long creature between a stack of books and put it in a plastic container."

shouldn't that read he smashed the creature between the books?!

[Trystan Shout]

Those terrorist bastards!

(I've always wanted to do that!)

[Aunt Nancy]

Ick. I hate ugly buglies, especially the kind that bite.

Yuck.

[Punkin Poo]

That "Briton" (aka - English guy) was lucky...all he found was a poisonous bug...I have a man-eating, venomous mother-in-law behind MY TV! She came in on fruit too, but leave my gay brother out of it.

[Eleanor]

This article proves what I've always said:

You cannot trust fruit!

[MOTW]

Stuart Hine and the Venomous Centipedes wbagnf ... well, you get the idea.

[Martinishark]

And you just know that if he found out that this centipede was non-venomous he would have complained about that.

[Amy]

I would have mistaken it for a lost Cheese Doodle.

[TCK]

I'm impressed - this guy finds a 9 inch venomous bug behind his TV and calmly traps it with some books...

If I found a 9 inch venomous bug - OK let's not fool ourselves here - what we're really talking about is a poisenous snake with legs - anyway, if I found that behind my TV, the LAST thing I would do is try to catch it

the first thing I would do is go for weapons - the bigger and more destructive the better - collateral damage to house and appliances being perfectly acceptable, no matter how serious or expensive...

[queensbee]

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. CRawly thingies are very high on my disgust-o-meter. yuck. i'm with you tck - get me weaponry.

[Somewhere North]

If this was Florida, the centipede probably would have been armed with a back up automatic weapon in case the poisonous tentacle approach failed and instead of scurrying away politely, it would have attacked. Even the British vermin is polite!

[insomniac]

(think Tom Petty)

You brought it home, you didn't know it
Till you heard it walking about, it's
'Scolopendra' though that wasn't the word that came out when you finally found it!

Listen, a hundred legs don't matter to me
When those poison claws are easy to see!
You know you don't have to live with a centipede!

Somewhere, somehow, some fruit picker
Must have felt you around some
Who knows maybe his arms swelled up, or fell off and his boss just turned and then he frowned some

Baby, he's nine inches but I'm gonna be sick
Guess I shouldn't hold him right next to my d***
You see I don't have live with a centipede!

[insomniac]

have to live (last line)

[JimW]

How's this for even scarier: Eggs.

[pogo]

Weapons? How about s small thermo-nuclear (thermo-nookyooler) device?

[Suzy Q]

That is most certainly NOT the kind of 9 inches I want!

[Bumble]

We have small, non-venomous centipedes at my house. The biggest I've ever seen might have been a couple of inches, but they're still quite disgusting. One night I saw one crawl across my pillow just as I was getting ready to get in bed. I really didn't want to go to bed after that. *shudder*

[cyn]

It's the bananas i keep tellin' ya. The Bananas!

(now they're cleverly desguising it as "fruit")

BANANAS I say!!

[Stupendous Man]

I'm surprised to hear they think this beastie came from South America. Great Britain's ties to India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia would indicate to me that's its most probable point of origin. They have them there, too, and provide lots of fruits and native vegetables to the Far Easterners now living in the UK.

Bumble, aren't you in the great northwest? If so, that was probably a harmless, but icky, millipede you saw on your pillow.

[Zaphod]

I think that Scolopendra Gigantea wbagnfarb comprised wholly of Latin university professors (not that they are Latin themselves, but they teach Latin).

On the other hand, Blistering Rash wbagnfa grunge b.

[Bumble]

Oh, no SM. We have millipedes too, but this was a centipede. They look like this. This wasn't an isolated incident. Our house is very old, and those things are all over the basement and they come up in the pipes and stuff. We find them in the sink at my church a lot.

[Bumble]

It's unbelievable how fast they can move. Granted, they should be able to move fast with that many legs, but still. The best way to kill them is one quick smack to knock their legs off, then you can pinch them up in a tissue or something, and you don't grind centipede goo into your carpet. Man. The things we talk about here.

[Stupendous Man]

That's a good link, Bumble, but I don't think the beast pictured is a centipede. I used to have that beast in my house in Junction City, KS. Maybe someone on the blog can tell us what it's called... in polite language.

[Bumble]

Well, that and several similar pictures popped up in my google for centipede. Everyone here has always said that's what they were. *shrugs* I dunno. All I know is I have tons of unpleasant creepy crawlies in my house. We've had roach issues before, Black Widows in CA, and before I was born, in Spokane, my family moved into a new house. My sisters turned on the tap to run a bath, and a stream of black ants came out of the tap ahead of the water. Tons of them. Scared them to death; they were little.

[Bumble]

I rest my case.

[Stupendous Man]

Bumble, I stand corrected. According to The Fieldbook of Natural History, Second Edition (Palmer and Fowler, McGraw-Hill, NY, 1975) that beast is the common House Centipede, found "...from New England through central and western states, but more common in the South." I've never seen one in the South, but the Palmetto Bugs and Saber-toothed Orange Tree Arachnids probably caused their extinction below the Mason-Dixon Line since the book's publication. All this time I thought it was a Kansas cockroach.

[Stupendous Man]

Once, long ago, when I was Stupendous Manlet, I saw natives I hired with taxpayers' money to clean up the jungle around my humble hovel put the centipedes, easily larger than the one captured in the UK, inside their shirts, where the beast would run around and around their waistline tickling them. (They were such a funloving bunch of little cutthroats.) Then they would place the centipede in a bell jar with a scorpion about ten inches long and gamble on which one would kill the other. Talk about the Good Times!

[Bumble]

May I just say, ICK!!

[Aunt Nancy]

Bumble - I'll see your ICK and raise you an EEEWWW!!

BTW - how are you feeling, post wisdom-tooth-surgery wise?

[Bumble]

Oh, wisdom teeth issues are so last week Aunt Nancy. Right now I'm into anxiety and panic issues regarding schoolwork, stress, and my future in general. Not eating well, sick to my stomach most of the time, bursting into tears for no (serious) reason. It's genetic. They tell me it'll pass. :-)

[kibby F5™]

*is surprised NOT to see a comment about this being a "delicacy" in Japan*

[kibby F5™]

Something THAT size should be able to feed a family of 4!

[cuzn ed]

This just goes to show:
NEVER accept home deliveries from South American fruit freighters.

[ceeg22]

I wouldn't squish it between two books because then I'd have to throw away those books. I would call my brother-in-law to come chase it out of my apt.

[Ivory Bill Woodpecker]

Insomniac--I stand in awe. I wonder if the old Mad Hatter reads this blog.