I had another centipede encounter this weekend and it left me with a racing heart and prickly nerves. Afterwards, I was compelled to try to find out something about them thinking it would perhaps alleviate some of my new found fear. Oh nonononono. I found out that these little buggers are poisonous! Not terribly poisonous to humans, but if they are provoked (maybe by a hand swatting them off of one's face in their sleep) they will attack and leave the victim with a bee sting like wound! I can forgive bees their stings, they are just doing their job when gigantic feet come crashing down onto the flower they are extracting nectar from and their lovely little fuzzy bodies (I am a bee fan if you can't tell!). Centipedes however, are just creeping about, doing God knows what, and then when they see you (and good god, they absolutely do see you) instead of fleeing they either hold their ground or advance at you (!) with all those unnaturally moving legs. And now I know that one set of legs is actually a set of venomous pinchers. Supposedly, they do help lower the household pest population, but I don't have an irrational fear of gnats and flies so in my mind the centipede is not merely a pest, but a walking nightmare.

Oh and in my search for information, I found out that there is such a thing as a bat-eating centipede.

I'm done.

(PS: no links to any of this info because I am too freaked out to visit these sites again!)