Baby Steps Backwards

Be still my barely beating heart, it seems as though my fear of insects has been rekindled. Remember when I was trying to overcome my intense phobia of spiders? I was coming along quite well too. I managed to kill a few all.by.myself. A feat of miraculous proportions if you had ever seen me in close proximity to a spider, especially the hairy jumpy ones.

But since the Husband was getting tired of coming hither every time I beckoned him for spider removal, I figured I should become a little bit more self-reliant. He asked me what I did before he was around, and I honestly couldn’t remember. I figured I had never come close to a spider before I met the Husband. That was the only logical explanation. But anyway, my mission to no longer fear reaching close enough to kill a spider had been mildly successful. Albeit there was still perhaps a scream or two that escaped during the extermination process. But that is almost required technique when smashing a spider with a big hefty boot.

Now I’ve been using the past tense here for a reason because something happened to make me retreat to my old ways. Something so hideous and unsightly, that even in death I could not stand to look at it, let alone dispose of it.

When Bosco told me there was something strange in his wagon, I went to take a look see. I figured it was a spider or an escaped piece of baby poop, but I needed to act fast before Bubba decided to eat whatever it was. Did I tell you about the time I found him sitting in his bedroom with spider legs hanging out of his mouth? No? Well I was probably too traumatized to talk about it at the time.

Anyway, I followed Bosco to his wagon and saw this (Am I the only one who sort of feels like throwing up just looking at it?):

Dead, obviously. But it was horrifying nevertheless. So many curled up legs. Such long antennae.

If I had seen it in a living state it would have looked more like this:

Photo credit

Scutigera coleoptrata. More commonly known as a house centipede. And what I like to call, Fetalus positionus inducera.

I’m about 1.8% guilt-ridden that I didn’t feel one ounce of pity for the creature who apparently got stuck, or decided to just stay put and die because the thought of enduring another winter was just too much to handle.

All I could think about was getting the carcass out of my general vicinity. But I couldn’t bring myself to even grab it with a piece of tissue. So I took a couple pictures (of course), wheeled the wagon into the bathroom, shut the door, and waited for the Husband to get home from work while wallowing in my lost dignity.