Why Living in Paradise Can Sometimes Suck

This evening, as I was sitting on the couch watching a little 30 Rock on Netflix, I heard my dog jump up from his typical position on a rug close by and run off in some unnoticed direction.  Given my show of choice, I wasn't really paying him much mind, naturally, until I realized he was still scuffling around a good thirty seconds or so after he’d originally gotten up.  I glanced down the hallway towards the front door and found him stretched out as far as his little Schnauzer body could possibly go and then jerking backwards, all while making his typical trademark snorting noises. Knowing that as of yesterday we had had a little gecko friend visiting with us at that part of the house, I rushed down the hallway to stop the eventual murder of our sweet little new friend.

What I saw next literally stopped me in my tracks.

It wasn’t a terrible image of a Miniature Schnauzer ripping apart a nice, friendly little gecko, however.  Thankfully the gecko has survived at least another night.

It was something much, much worse -- a centipede.

via The Baker Family -- yeah, that Google image search was not fun...

A disgusting, super-long, thousand-legged, horrible, squirming centipede…and my dog was lunging directly for it.

I snapped out of my frozen state and yelled at Liam to get away from the nasty creature.  He hesitated, and I took the opportunity to grab him and pull him to safety.  And then it hit me -- there was a freaking giant CENTIPEDE in my house.

Ever since we moved on island, Mr. L and I had both naturally heard tales of the centipedes who call this place home.  I never really thought much of them to be honest, except for the fact that they can be dangerous to dogs and have a very painful bite.  We’d even seen one back a few months ago during one of our evening strolls.  Let me tell you, it was disgusting then, but SO much worse this time since it was in MY foyer.

I locked Liam up in his crate and started straight up freaking out.  Bugs are not my thing.  They never have been; they never will be.  I will freak out no matter what kind of creepy crawlie creature I find near me, spiders and cockroaches especially.  Even ants in large numbers send me into a pile of the weeps.  So you can imagine what this thing did to me this time.

via Thankfully Thorns Have Roses -- FREAK OUT!

In the midst of my blubbering, I decided to take action and do the only thing I could think of -- I grabbed my trusty bottle of Raid and proceeded to spray the crap out of the intruder as it dove for cover under the rug by the front door.  I stopped spraying and waited.  I turned around, ran to my phone, and asked Google for help on how to dispose it.  I looked back up at the mat, willing it to diediedie.  After about five minutes of watching, Googling, and crying, it hit me -- what if it had darted from under the rug while I was looking away at my phone?

So I gathered up the remaining shambles of my courage and grabbed an old cardboard box to shove at the rug, hoping to scare the critter out from underneath it.  Nothing happened.  I tried again -- still nothing.  I began to have visions of this nasty insect crawling through my house, wreaking havoc on my peace of mind.  So I rolled the vacuum cleaner to the hallway and used the hose attachment to shove the rug out of the way.  Thank God, it was still there!  And it was very clearly jerking and spazzing around.  So I did what any sane person would do -- I sprayed some more.  After enduring a few more minutes of being on its death bed (and a few cell phone pictures), my nemesis finally, finally expired.  At the time of this writing I’m still attempting to figure out just exactly how to dispose of him…ugh.

Mr. Centipede on my dirty floor!

Have you had any awful experiences with a bug, or just awful experiences being alone during a deployment or separation?  Personally, this will probably go down in the history books as my worst experience this deployment...at least I hope so!