Friday, April 3, 2009

Supersize It!



You know, I really hate living in the pilbara. And it's not just because of the heat. Over the last 12 months, we have had a centipede infestation in our house. Actually, a pest guy told me that they live in little sand mounds outside, so it's not so much infestation, but visitation.

This week, we've had 3 of the bastard things in one week. Last Saturday, there was a small one on the floor of our bedroom. Now, when I say small, I mean, about 5 or 6 centimetres long. Then on Monday night Shane saw one outside under my car in the carport which was massive, about 14 cms long. So he smashed it with a rock.

Then last night, the worst; one in Cassidy's room. She'd gone to bed and was sitting reading with the light on. Shane and I were in the loungeroom, and I'd just put the bottle into Devon's mouth when Cassidy started screaming. Shane opened the hall door and started swearing, so I put Devon down and ran, thinking if Shane's swearing, there's blood, she's fallen and hurt herself. By the time I got round the corner, Shane had picked up Cassidy's toy laptop (the closest thing to hand) and was smashing this centipede. And it was alive. Like I mean, it was lively and trying to run off, and it was fast. It was about 8 or 9 cms long and was as fat as your finger, so gross.
Thank God Cassidy brought our attention to it rather than try and pick it up, which she's done before (to bugs, not centipedes.) I questioned her thoroughly about where it come from and whether she'd touched it, if it had been on her bed or anything and luckily, it had only been on the floor. But this is my biggest fear; that one of these bloody things is going to bite one of my kids, coz that's what happened to me last year.
I was sitting on the lounge with Shane and felt a pinch, like an ant, on my back at my armpit. When I leant forward and looked back at the lounge, a centipede crawled out, about 7 cms long. I immediately rang the hospital and then Health Direct, as I was 7 months pregnant at the time. I was fine though, just a sting like an ant, and no effects for me at all, so I was lucky. I wonder if maybe it just pinched me, rather than bit me? "Get OFF me lady!"

The accompanying photos are an example of another bug we have a lot of. We get these tiny little black bugs and, as Cassidy found out recently, they bite. They have pincers at the front and can give a nasty little nip. This huge bugger was just outside our back door. Shane and I were amazed, we've never seen such a large version of a common bug before. And these photos don't do it justice, I mean, I wouldn't have been surprised if it'd started talking, it was so huge. And don't worry, we didn't kill it, we set it free in the backyard!

So in the last 6 months, I've been bitten by a centipede, have trodden on a snake (a baby brown snake in our backyard), so all I need now is to wrestle a crocodile and I'll have a trifecta! I have to go now, am ringing our pest guy to organise our next annual bug spray. Sigh. I hope he's got extra...

1 comments:

GlossQueen said...

Ewww yuk! It's time you moved back down here, those bugs are horrible.