And then this morning I cheerfully opened my front door to take May-May potty and I found this:
Oh but he was alive of course... very VERY much alive.
He was waiting for me on my welcome mat, no doubt planning his attack on my unsuspecting foot.
I screamed... I dropped May-May's leash and slammed the door. My heart was beating uncontrollably fast, those things are highly poisonous!!! I cracked the door open again, watching. He moved away from me, reaching out with those little feeler antennae of his. His head was a bright orange, obviously a warning to everyone that he was dangerous. I watched his hundreds of little yellow legs move quickly over the ground as he turned the corner. So I did what any level-headed woman would do:
I called my husband.
"There's a huge centipede outside our door! HUGE! He has the orange head and the giant pinchers on his butt! What do I DO?"
Laughs "Well, kill him!"
"How!?! If we only had a shovel!! I could chop him up into pieces!"
"Naw, just use a shoe,"
"Not one of mine! Mine are too small! I'll grab one of yours"
I brought Ander's shoe down onto the unsuspecting spawn of Satan at my doorstep. Again and again I smashed him, cracking his head and pinchers, anywhere I could hit him.
He stopped squirming.
He was dead.
I took a deep breath. "What to do now?" I thought, "well, May-May has to pee, so I'll take her and come back."
May-May was a very good girl. She peed for me very quickly, for I had to come and dispose of the body... the body...
It was gone.
"Where did it go!? It was just here!!"
Then I saw him... crouched underneath the ridge of the wall where it meets the cement. He was still alive!!
"Oh no you don't!" I cried.
So I called Ander again:
"He's still alive!!!!"
"How alive?"
"I don't know!"
"I mean, is he alive alive? Or just barely alive?"
"Well, he's pretty sad... not moving a whole lot... I really rained on his parade."
"Just hit him some more"
"What do I do with him when he's finally dead?"
"Throw him out into the grass"
"With what?!"
"A piece of paper or something..."
"Can I flush him?"
"Yes, you can flush him"
Then I get an idea.
I came running out of the apartment saying "DIE!" while spraying Raid hornet spray all over the cement. He never knew what hit him, he was already pretty badly damaged.
I nudged him with Ander's shoe...nothing. He was really dead. Really and truly dead. Dead as a doornail.
I thought about disposing of him in my toilet... or throwing him out into the grass. I just couldn't do it. He was too big, too wet, and too scary. I just couldn't do it.
As I walked into my apartment with my giant shoe and can of Raid I turned and took one last look at it lying there in it's pool of poison. "That's what you get, sucker," I said to myself as I walked inside.
