Last night, my wife, Miranda Kopfschmertzen and I were bringing in our dog, The Nudge, from his nightly business. Just as my wife crossed the threshold of the door, something caught her eye and she yelped in surprise. I was already inside, so she called me back out, “Ew! Lordleiter, come back out here. EWWWW! Glah glah glah glah…It’s giving me the willies. SO GROSS!”
I went outside and saw this.
Check out that tiny spider in the upper right trying so hard to pretend that he is just some random debris and avoid the attentions of giant bug monster. This is the same evasion tactic Han Solo employed in “The Empire Strikes Back” when being chased by star destroyers and tie fighters after narrowly escaping from a space worm in an asteroid field. Standard practice, really.
Naturally I went right to my field guides to try and identify this beast, but the books did not have any answers. Next I went online. Thanks to BugGuide.net, I was able to narrow it down to what I think is something called a “House Centipede.” House Centipede is surely a deceivingly banal name for such a fearsome devil.
Once I had the name, I went straight to the Wikipedia entry for House Centipede. Wikipedia – The first source for internet truth! Here’s what it had to say:
Click on the link above to learn more about House Centipedes.