It was fall, 2002. It was the start of my 2nd year of university, and I had just moved into a basement apartment with my new roommates, who I’d known from residence the previous year. It was only my 2nd year living away from home, and I hadn’t adjusted to the new region of the country in any way. I was 2000 km from home. My roommates all grew up within a few hundred km of school.
So, when I looked up one afternoon and saw… THAT clinging to the hallway ceiling, I didn’t know what to make of it. We have centipedes back home, but they’re small, narrow, and live under rocks. Nothing about them suggested that what I was looking at then was related to them (other than that they both had way, way too many legs). So, I was… concerned, but mostly that I’d meet these alien things from this sometimes alien feeling place regularly.
I grabbed some tupperware so that I could capture it and ask my roommates about it, because surely they’d know what it was. But when I brought the plastic container up to meet the ceiling, the thing made off down the hallway like it was trying to win the 100 metre dash. After several attempts at trying to encapsulate the thing, I accidentally squished it between the edge of the container and the ceiling. This was, at least, enough to actually get it out of the house.
On my way to the back door, I passed one of my roommate’s rooms, and poked my head in to acquire about the still squirming hellspawn hanging out of the plastic tub, expecting to discover the name of this fell beast, but all he did was back away in disgust, declaring much more loudly than I think he intended that he didn’t know.
So, lacking a proper name, we just called them “evil bugs”. Thankfully, we only found a few more of them over the next few years.
I spent the last year and a bit in a basement that wasn’t properly insulated and near the sump pump system but never in my life have I seen so big and so many of them. My girlfriend was terrified and wouldn’t sleep if she knew there was one still alive on the walls or ceiling. It was brick walls too so if one was in between the bricks I had to stick a make shift “smothering device” which was just a wad of Kleenex on the tip of something small and long so I could crush them before they wriggled away only to return. I know you’re not supposed to kill them but honestly there was a revolving door of them and it didn’t matter if they stayed a bit and then mottled or came in fully grown, these suckers were having a hay day. I tried laying out a sticky sheet to catch them and it didn’t seem to affect them. Just caught a couple daddy long legs and rolly pollies, which I would have preferred! I hate these things because of how they move on the floor in the corner of my eye, nothing compares to that immediate jolt of terror as you scramble out of its way.
It was fall, 2002. It was the start of my 2nd year of university, and I had just moved into a basement apartment with my new roommates, who I’d known from residence the previous year. It was only my 2nd year living away from home, and I hadn’t adjusted to the new region of the country in any way. I was 2000 km from home. My roommates all grew up within a few hundred km of school.
So, when I looked up one afternoon and saw… THAT clinging to the hallway ceiling, I didn’t know what to make of it. We have centipedes back home, but they’re small, narrow, and live under rocks. Nothing about them suggested that what I was looking at then was related to them (other than that they both had way, way too many legs). So, I was… concerned, but mostly that I’d meet these alien things from this sometimes alien feeling place regularly.
I grabbed some tupperware so that I could capture it and ask my roommates about it, because surely they’d know what it was. But when I brought the plastic container up to meet the ceiling, the thing made off down the hallway like it was trying to win the 100 metre dash. After several attempts at trying to encapsulate the thing, I accidentally squished it between the edge of the container and the ceiling. This was, at least, enough to actually get it out of the house.
On my way to the back door, I passed one of my roommate’s rooms, and poked my head in to acquire about the still squirming hellspawn hanging out of the plastic tub, expecting to discover the name of this fell beast, but all he did was back away in disgust, declaring much more loudly than I think he intended that he didn’t know.
So, lacking a proper name, we just called them “evil bugs”. Thankfully, we only found a few more of them over the next few years.
.
.
.
I don’t miss Ontario.
I spent the last year and a bit in a basement that wasn’t properly insulated and near the sump pump system but never in my life have I seen so big and so many of them. My girlfriend was terrified and wouldn’t sleep if she knew there was one still alive on the walls or ceiling. It was brick walls too so if one was in between the bricks I had to stick a make shift “smothering device” which was just a wad of Kleenex on the tip of something small and long so I could crush them before they wriggled away only to return. I know you’re not supposed to kill them but honestly there was a revolving door of them and it didn’t matter if they stayed a bit and then mottled or came in fully grown, these suckers were having a hay day. I tried laying out a sticky sheet to catch them and it didn’t seem to affect them. Just caught a couple daddy long legs and rolly pollies, which I would have preferred! I hate these things because of how they move on the floor in the corner of my eye, nothing compares to that immediate jolt of terror as you scramble out of its way.
…and yes this is Ontario lol