Uninvited Guest

Saturday night we had just fallen asleep when all of the sudden Keith sat straight up in bed, turned, lifted his pillow and started smacking the bed with it. As I was coming to, I asked "Keith? What's going on?" "It's a centipede," he calmly replied. I'm not sure what all happened after that, but somehow I ended up hitting at it (my eye sight is much better than Keith's and this was all happening in the dark) as it ran towards my pillow and Keith grabbed for a book. Big woop-dee-doo, you are probably thinking. A centipede, that's not any worse than a spider. Fellow blog readers, let me inform you that you are wrong. Centipedes in Dominica can be much worse than the small spiders you may find in your bed (or even the slightly bigger spiders you may find in your bed.) I did a little research and found what I believe are the type of centipedes we have here, called Vietnamese Centipedes. They can get really big here, but our friend was just a baby. Click here to see an accurate and gross picture of a a full grown one as well as learn fun facts---like their length can reach up to 8 in. long and they are "a large, aggressive species with a nasty attitude and a serious bite!" (Or so says animal-world.com) Anyway, back to the story. So, a little panicked, I pushed as hard as I could on the bed with the big, hard cover book, but knew it was not killing it. I asked for a shoe, but was not successful in pinching the centipede between the book and the shoe. Finally, Keith had both of my flip flops on his hands (somewhere in there the light got turned on) and as I lifted the book and jumped back, he grabbed the finger-length centipede between the shoes and took it into the bathroom sink. Well, if you are wondering how Keith woke up at midnight with the knowledge that a centipede was uninvitingly partying in our bed, it was because Keith was crowding Centi (the centipede) out and he gave Keith a nice bite on the shoulder to let him know it. It broke the skin on Keiths shoulder and gave him a welt the size of a coin (if you like a good story, pretend it was the size of a quarter. If you are more interested in the truth, go with a penny.) After the fight, the death, and the picture taking, Keith and I stood against the wall farthest from the bed, staring at it. We glanced at each other and stared back at the bed, not speaking a word. Sometime between that moment and 7:50 the next morning, we both made it in to bed and I guess we literally killed the party because I didn't wake up again until I could smell Keith cooking breakfast.

(Mind you, this is after it was beaten on the bed and then smashed between 2 shoes)