Creepy Crawly Chaos

Sunday, April 19th, as the girls were getting ready for bed, we heard Maëva shriek from the downstairs toilet to come rescue her from a big black thing in the corner. I asked whether is was a centipede, and she said maybe. Turns out it was. Up until a few years ago, we had about one centipede per year in the house, on average. We hadn't had any for quite a few years though, until early April when the girls were away on their choir trip and Sylvain found one in his bathroom sink. Two within a few weeks is certainly exceptional. The centipedes we get in the house are always about the same size: five to six inches long and about a centimeter wide. We get them into a bucket, shake the bucket constantly so they can't crawl up the side as we're making our way outside, then crush them with a rock or cut them in two with the shovel.

This particular evening, as I was helping Sylvain locate the shovel, Laureva shrieked from inside that Harry had a tick. She didn't want to touch it and she wanted me to hurry up and get it before she lost sight of it in his fur. I picked it up, set it on the counter and crushed it with the back end of a ball point pen. No sooner had I started to check on Sylvain's progress with centipede disposal than Laureva was shrieking again that Harry had another tick. I made short work of that one, as well. Sylvain finished destroying the centipede, and things finally settled down.

Guess that's countryside living for you!

P.S. I know that neither of these critters are technically "insects." However, as they are definitely in the category of little nuisance critters that bug us, and often commonly referred to as insects, I have chosen to attribute that label to the post, rather than create the labels "arthropods" and "arachnids."