I'll never forget the time I was on the floor at my apartment in Charleston, SC, watching a movie in the dark...I reached for my can of soda and noticed that the carbonation was especially noisy...thank GOD I picked up on that because I turned on the light and there on top of my can was a big fat roach. Ah, the south. I don't miss that about you.

We do have a leaky basement, though, and have had a few unwelcome guests this spring as a result. Nasty.

Okay Bruce. You just made me throw up in my mouth a little.

No roaches here, but wow. What a Spring.

Normally I find ladybugs quite endearing, but not when your airspace is invaded by them:
http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-ladybu...,3028100.story

BLECH

The world after the nuclear war...

http://gothamist.com/attachments/jen...roachanson.jpg

They did that on Mythbusters.

oooh yes! we get them in the pottery studio! we deal with them by smushing then into a piece of clay and firing it. makes awesome fake fossils.

Jim, Monnie, what the hell is that thing? It has far too many legs. Love the fossil idea though.

the pottery teacher knows the full latin name. he has it stapled to the notice board where we hang all of the specimins. it's right next to the sink. Sort of like a warning...

it's a centipede. nasty, messy to squoosh, they can jump, and they run fast.

Maybe it is just the angle, but it doesn't look like a regular centipede to me. Oh well, maybe I am just used to the giant venemous centipedes Down Under...

I was sitting on a log around a campfire once and got bitten on the arse by a centipede. It had massive mandibles. Nothing like that. It got fried along with the log it was inhabiting.

eta: yes it was very funny how high I jumped

http://faunanet.gov.au/wos/images/fa...full/f103a.jpg


It was one of these suckers that bit me! (or one of its cousins)

This is the largest native Australian centipede, growing to 14 cm long. The Giant Centipede is a member of the scolopendrid family, which includes the largest centipede in the world, Scolopendra gigantea - a 30 cm centipede from South America that is able to eat mice and lizards.

Scolopendrid centipedes live in logs and sheltered places and, like all centipedes, the first pair of legs behind the head is modified into a pair of fangs, which contain a poison gland. A bite from the Giant Centipede may cause severe pain that could persist for several days. However, no deaths have been recorded from the bite of any Australian centipede.

That's only because people die too fast to say what bit them.

Well obviously it didn't kill me, but I had a lump on my bum for days.

We don't need to hear about your boyfriends, thanks.

:bolt:

If that's a centipede, I'd hate to see what you Australians call snakes!!

Let's not talk about snakes or how on the same camping trip there was a swimming hole up around the bend where we'd go to have a wash in the evenings, but that was also the times the snakes would come down to drink too. Once or twice they decided to cross while we were in the water. Kinda scarey, but awesome in a way too. They didn't care about us. Just went round as if we were a log in the water.