Stand Back, They Spit

On Sunday morning, we were quietly going about eating our various breakfasts - raisin bran for me, cocoa puffs for Bird (shut up, it was Sunday - didn't you get to have a totally awful, rot your teeth, sugar filled breakfast once in a while? At least it wasn't candy corn...), and a nice big hunk of pumpkin spice cake with vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger buttercream icing (with candy corn decorations) for T...he had an orange soda to wash it down, so it was healthy.

What a good wife and mother am I.

So anyway, we were dining upon our healthy, sumptuous repast when T called out "What the heck is that??"

I thought he was looking at something on the computer - he does this to me often, because he doesn't remember that I don't like craning my neck to see what he's looking at, so we play a sort of verbal tug-of-war when he sees a photograph or a story that he thinks I need to know about to live. Sigh. This time, I refused to budge.

Bird then chimed in with "Wow, what is it??"

Still not looking.

T said "I don't know but it sure is ugly."

C'mon, two days after Halloween? I bet it's some dog in a costume or someone's butt painted up to look like a monster or something, and I'm not looking. It hurts my neck to twist around and lean back so I can see the screen.

They go on about whatever it is for a minute, and I finally ask "Is it something on the computer, or something here in the house?"

"In the house." T replies.

Hmmm...and ugh...because now I have to turn and see whatever has them enthralled.

I stared with horrid fascinations at this :



It was promenading up the wall and then onto the ceiling while we watched.

I told T "Whatever it is, I bet it walks across the ceiling, stops over my head, and falls off."

T decided he didn't like the looks of the thing, so he brushed it off the ceiling before it could carry out its dastardly plan, and then he smushed it. He couldn't help it, it was a primal male response, the need to protect his family from a ferocious...erm...what was it, anyway?

Bird was fascinated, and he was sad when Daddy crushed the bug that ate Atlanta so I, being the responsible Mum that I am, looked it up.

I found BugGuide.Net, and the above photo (because I wasn't fast enough to snap a pic before it became all Jackson Pollock-y on the bottom of a shoe), and was relieved to be able to tell bird it was poisonous (well, if you're another bug or it's a particularly big on and it bites you...details, details...) (because otherwise he would feel bad, and probably cry, because we have always simply relocated the wildlife around here before and for all his Evil Genius ways, he's really a sweet and sometimes sensitive kid).

Readers, I give you the House Centipede; it may look frightful and quite dangerous, but it's no match for the common sneaker.