Then I went down into the basement. Yep, the basement. You're thinking spiders, right? If you are, you're thinking wrong. I lifted the plastic tarp covering the red-clay floor, and there staring back at me was the most frightening insect I'd ever seen. It didn't even appear to be terrestrial -- it's long legs (there must of been three dozen of them) undulated along the burgundy dirt, its snakelike-trunk rolling and pulsating as it closed in on me. Ever seen "Starship Troopers?" Well, that about sums it up. My basement was "an ugly planet; a bug planet." It scampered off eventually, leaving me near tears, cowering behind the hot-water heater (which also needed to be replaced, by the way).
I soon learned what I'd seen was a "house centipede," and that they typically don't bite humans. They kill a lot of other unwanted bugs, too: mosquitoes, roaches, blah blah blah. Don't care. I want them out of here. They are hands down the most frightening bugs I've ever come across. The thought of one cruising over my face in the middle of the gives me the chills. Exterminators some really have any solid approaches to killing these things, as they don't pop up too much. They're elusive and typically stay away from high-traffic areas in the home. Again, this was a pest control job I was going to have to tackle on my own.
