Friday, July 18, 2008

What's that bug?

Today at work, I glanced over and saw a centipede making his way into the conference room. I got a co-worker to guard it while I went to get a man. I ran into the collection officer's office and informed him that we had a situation in the lobby. He immediately jumped up, with a panicked look on his face, and followed me to the bug. (I might have over reacted a tad!) After a quick inspection of the creature, he stepped on it and pulled a snotty Kleenex (I know it was snotty because I put it in there) out of the trash can and scooped it up and threw it away. Well, I became curious about this bug. I am not certain if it was a centipede or a millipede. So, I began to search the web and found a very interesting site that I want to pass along to you all. It is whatsthatbug.com. Basically, you can take a picture of a bug and they will tell you what it is and post it on their website. After searching this site, I am still unsure what he was but I am somewhat ashamed for killing him. I found out that these bugs eat other bugs that we don't want hanging around. I suppose I should have just released him into the wild...or at least onto Main Street.

This reminds me of a few other "bug situations" that I have had. One summer I worked at a girl's camp and accidentally kicked a scorpion into a swimming pool filled with screaming children. I also caught a pregnant spider in a film canister. We dumped her into a bathtub which caused it's millions of babies to spread out all over the place. It looked like someone dropped a container of pepper into the tub. That summer my cabin-mate and I also mistakenly cut off a lizards tail. We thought it was a snake! (I am aware that lizards and snakes are not bugs. I just thought I would throw that in!)

I will close with one other story. When Jeremy and I were dating, I called him up one night and informed him that I needed his immediate help in my apartment. Upon his arrival, I led him into the bathroom where I instructed him to kill the spider that had decided to occupy my shower. He said "ok, but I will never kill a bug for you again." To this day, he has kept his word.

P.S. During my research, I discovered that Oklahoma is a breeding ground for freakishly large centipedes. Woo-Hoo for Oklahoma!

Check out whatsthatbug.com

2 comments:

Janice said...

Maybe when you go for help you should say you have a "Bug situation" that you would like some help with. Well, maybe not, because then they might not help you. I don't know - but when I call for help with a bug I leave when the squisher arrives to get rid of the bug.

Craig Boyer said...

Syd-
Marcia and I had an encounter with one of those prehistoric looking centipedes - it scared the crap out of us both...... probably 8' long or so and just nasty looking. I killed it in our entryway hall at the old house. I was flabbergasted when I first saw it - it looked like it escaped from Jurassic Park or something.....scary stuff, man