Between this and the shower lizard, I'm starting to feel like the desert Dr. Doolittle

Recently, our campus bookstore had an amazing sale on a lot of their merchandise. Most notably, they had a number of hardcover novels for less than $2 (and, in some cases, less than $1) each. I picked up two of them on a whim, thinking that even if I didn't like the books, I was only out a couple bucks for the experience (and I can always resell them for store credit at Hastings).

Last night, after we had gone to bed, I decided to try out one of the books. Maybe 30 pages into it, I decided I wasn't too crazy about the plot, so I would just skim through the rest of it and get the big picture. I tend to be a slow reader (I like to really take in the words I read), and I discovered last night that I'm also a slow skimmer. I made my "skim" decision at about 10:00. At 11:50, I was still making my way to the back cover. I generally don't stay up much past 10, but I knew I could afford to sleep in this morning, so I wasn't worried about it. Anyhow, at about 11:50, I heard a strange sound. I'd been hearing strange sounds for a while, but we sleep with a fan on, so I figured things were just moving in the breeze. The sound at 11:50 was different, though. For one, it was a continuous sound, not just a quick paper-crackle or rustle. For another, it wasn't a sound I'd heard before. Ever. It was almost like bacon frying, sort of an odd hissing-sizzle. Being the type of person who likes to know what's making the freaky noise in his bedroom in the middle of the night, I tried to pinpoint the sound and determined it was coming from a cardboard box about 3 feet away from my side of the bed. Well, it turns out that odd hissing-sizzle is what it sounds like when a four-inch centipede crawls around on cardboard.

I need to make absolutely clear, here and now, that I hate centipedes. Most of the other desert oddities we deal with don't bother me too badly, not even the rattlesnakes, but centipedes just freak me the crap out. So it was that as I tried to figure out the most expeditious way to dispatch the multi-appendaged wickedness, my muttered cursing woke Jen up. Jen's not such a big fan of centipedes, either, and I imagine waking up and being told there's a centipede in the room is probably an emotionally strenuous scenario, but she handled it like a pro. We both got up and watched the despised intruder for a few moments, then I grabbed an old sneaker and my hunting knife (surely, you remember my hunting knife from some of the photos Jen posted when we first moved to the ranch. It's very good for making bugs wish they'd stayed outside... and then dying.). The only other time I've had to deal with a centipede was when I found that five-inch charmer in our shower, and neither a shoe nor my knife was terribly effective against it (they're really the only bug-killing weapons I have, though; the .38 leaves holes in the floor). Fact of the matter is, centipedes dislike dying more than just about any other insect I've ever met. Tarantulas even go down easier than centipedes. MUCH easier. ("But tarantulas aren't insects; they're arachnids." Yes, thank you, Adam Veihl.)

Thus armed, I waited for the centipede to move to a spot where I'd have a clear shot at him with the sneaker. By now, he'd crawled off the box and, as we watched in growing alarm, he made his way under my dresser. We debated for a bit whether or not to move the dresser and go after him, but he resolved the matter by coming back out and heading across the floor. Bingo! I brought the sneaker down hard enough that my arm hurt afterwards, right on the front half of him. The impact was enough to kill that end of him, but not enough to even splatter his guts. For all intents and purposes, the centipede was still intact, though, mercifully, dead. Or so I thought. I'm no entymologist (again, that's Adam's field), but it seemed like after the front half of our intruder was dead, the back half took over. What I mean is, I poked at the front half of the centipede with my knife, and nothing happened. I poked at the back half, and it went crazy. Its back feelers started swinging around like the front feelers had done, and it was trying in vain to crawl away, backwards, as though the butt had become the head. Thankfully, the front end was completely stationary, so it wasn't going anywhere, but it was certainly animated. I put the tip of my knife through its butt, and then sliced down, trying to kill whatever was still driving it, but to no avail. It was still kicking, and it was angry. So what on earth do you do with a semi-undead centipede who has become impervious to stabbing and chopping? Glad you asked. Helpful soul that I am, I assisted my friend into his brand new Ziploc suit, and then I assisted him into the freezer.

Josh LaBo desert survival tip: When dealing with stubborn, hard-to-kill household pests, never underestimate the effectiveness of simple home cryogenics. It's the no-fuss, no-messy-gut-clean-up way to dispatch even the most diehard creature.

I checked on the centipede this morning, and I'm very happy to say the matter has been firmly dealt with. What's kind of cool is that, since he froze with his legs sort of sticking out, you can clearly see the spines on the end of each leg. I'm eager for Jen to get home so I can show them to her. Bugs are much less terrifying and much more interesting, when you can be sure they're dead. I took a few pictures of the bug in his gallon-size coffin, just before I put him in the freezer last night. I'm willing to bet they'll be showing up on Jen's blog before too long, so keep an eye out, if you really want to have a look at this most nasty and despicable of all God's creations. The part of this whole episode that impressed Jen the most last night, was that I was awake at 11:50 to find the horrible thing. As I said earlier, it's ENORMOUSLY rare for me to be awake much after 10, so we have to assume my book-skimming was really God watching out for us.