Apparently they have insects in hell

Who knew? But it's true, I tell you! You'd think that, coming from Florida, I'd seen it all. At least that's what I thought. But no. Oh no, no, no. There exists a creature that could only be from hell itself. From hell!!!! Go find a nice, high, safe place to sit while I tell you about this. And turn on all the lights. *shudder*

One night, after I'd fed the dogs, we headed to the door to go potty (the dogs, not me). Squee was sitting on the stairs, staring at something. Sometimes she zones out, but just for fun I was all, "What are you looking at, pretty lady?" Ha. Well, just then something lunged at her from the carpet. From its perspective, the scene probably looked like this:

ATTACK!!!!
OH MY GOD!!!!!! It was horrible. It was 3 feet long... or maybe an inch and a half, but it seemed like 3 feet. And it had 80 sets of legs... or maybe 15, but still. And those legs were each 10 feet long... I still stand behind this estimate. And it was fast! So fast, the damn thing had racing stripes down its back. Squee jumped back, I jumped back, the dogs all jumped back. Somebody has to do something, I thought. I grabbed a shoe and beat that fucker senseless, screaming the entire time.

I think it's worth pointing out that I usually escort wayward travelers outside unharmed, especially spiders. Not knowing what this thing was, though, I fell back on that ol' philosophy of kill first, ask questions later. And I do not regret this.

The next morning I tried to convey the terror of the situation to my mother. She hopped online to find out what I'd seen. Turns out, it was a house centipede. A who?? That's such a mild name for such a horror of nature. I mean, look:

source
AHHHHHHHH!!!!!! D: AND THEY BITE, TOO!

She saw one a couple of weeks later. And then a week or so ago I was outside and happened to see one hanging out on the side of the building. I could feel it watching me the entire time. Ugh! I don't actually believe in hell, but that's the only place this thing could have originated from. Eww!

So if you see one, my advice to you is... run like hell!

On a side note, I love that picture of Squee. I was trying to get shots of her one day and she moved towards my phone as I snapped this one and it came out really cool. :)