An Unwelcome Visitor!

[Aaron Hoot]

While downstairs doing pushups with my sons, I kept seeing something running back and forth behind the curtain. I thought that it was just a lizard. We have quite a few of those and geckos. They are welcome visitors because they keep the bug population down especially mosquitoes. It wasn't one of our welcome visitors. It was a centipede! It wasn't one of the big ones but they can still give a nasty sting and get a small child sick. We just started rainy season and they come into the house because the ground is getting too moist. I am glad that the kids saw him before one of us got bit.

Aaron

[Max McKinley]

6 inches huh? Glad it wasn't one of the "big" ones. Dadgum!

[VRT Man]

Wow! That is a monster, Aaron!

Did you finally squish it? How did you make it stand still for the photo?

--Greg Mangan

[Aaron Hoot]

Max, would you watch your language on this forum? Dadgummit is a bad word where I am from! What, were you raised in a barn? No, the largest that we have seen down here is about 10-11 inches but I have heard that they get bigger.

Greg, the way that we got it to sit still was to say please. Even though they are aggressive, they are very polite and respond to manners. No, we knocked the little devil off of the curtain with a broom, picked it up with a pair of pliers, took him outside and squished his head with a piece of cement. I didn't want to mess him up too bad because I wanted to take a photo for you guys.

Thinman, that was hilarious! Thanks for the video! Believe it or not the one that we got that was around 10-11 inches you could literally stand on and it wouldn't hurt him. We had to hit him with a hammer to kill him. But like that video they are super aggressive. My son Jon was walking down the sidewalk and one came out of the grass and bit him on the foot. He was wearing flip flops. It swelled a little bit and hurt like crazy. He got a little sick but not too bad. He was lucky. He jumped about the time that it was striking and was able to get away from it with just a small bite. Once the boys captured a pretty big centipede and a fairly large lizard which was larger than the centipede and put them together in a bucket. I couldn't believe it, the centipede killed the lizard in a heartbeat. I know that it was wrong for them to do that but it was really cool.

Aaron

[farrout]

Thank you for sharing with us Aaron. A 6" centipede would be big enough, but one 10-11"! I'll pass on that.

Take care,
Steve

[Kevin Nickerson]

Aaron,The craziest thing is some people have giant centipedes as pets.Not kidding! On youtube they show one eating a mouse.Yeeesh!:excruciating:

[Max McKinley]

Max, would you watch your language on this forum? Dadgummit is a bad word where I am from! What, were you raised in a barn? No, the largest that we have seen down here is about 10-11 inches but I have heard that they get bigger.

Now Aaron, I am from the Piney Woods of East Texas. Born in Beaumont (the armpit of Texas), and raised in Longview. So, in short, yes, I was raised in a barn. :rotfl: I will try to clean up my language. :act-up:

[Kevin Nickerson]

I spent some time in Texas,when I went through basic training at beautiful Fort bliss lol! did some training at Fort Sam Huston army medical center,spent some time down in El Paso.This was during the seventies.There are some wonderful people down there and I would like to visit Texas again.This is coming from a yankee lol.I live in Massachusetts.P.S There is one incident that I remember from basic it did not involve centipedes!But a whole lot of ants Fire ants(ouch).In basic they showed us different insects native to that area THey said if you see a circular bare area in the grass don't step there. One guy was not paying attention and step where He shouldn't not have when we were marching ouch!!! You guys are great.Even if you were raised in a barn Max:laugh:I was born in Canada and the house I lived in for five years of my life only had a pot beelied cast iron stove the house had to stories to it. so that could qualify as a barn tended to stay in the kitchen a lot in the winter months:smile-big:Anyway sorry for the rambling-Kevin

[Aaron Hoot]

Hey Max,

I know that you know I was joking. The only place that we used to refer to as the "armpit" of Texas was either Dallas or Houston. You had me laughing on that one!

No problem on the rambling, Kevin, because anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting Texas has the tendency to ramble about it. Even in the armpits it is better than most places. By the way I would prefer centipedes any day over fire ants! I will tell you a good way to get rid of them if you ever get them. It is an old farmer's remedy for them. If you just put out poison they will only move a short distance away and eventually return. For some reason, lemon rinds do the trick. It takes a little while putting out fresh lemon rinds every couple of days for a couple of weeks but they will leave and not return to that bed. We don't have fire ants here but we have used it on little ants and it does the same thing.

Aaron

[Kevin Nickerson]

Thanks Aaron.Hey Max I hope you did not mind me joining in on the joke!!-Kevin

[Max McKinley]

It's funny. The wife is quite emphatic about me using dadgum around the kids. But, what's a hick to do?? Gotta tell ya though, the part of Dallas I work in could be aptly called the "armpit" of Dallas.

It's quite all right Kevin. As Aaron said, once you've spent time here, it's easy to ramble on about its greatness. There's planty of room for folks to join in on the joke.