Last night (my) Steve got back in from LA, so I picked him up from work (he'd driven but he had to take a work car to carry the equipment) and brought him back to his apartment. There was soft lighting, fresh flowers, a sense of joy and delight...and a big ugly squirmy CENTIPEDE on the ceiling!! (For a vague idea of what it looks like, click here.) My first reaction was to squeal with total horror, mostly because it was on the ceiling -- the idea of it dropping on me was horrifying -- muscles rigid, staring, ready for fight or flight. Steve was going to kill it, but then my entomological impulse kicked in, and I nabbed a clear pint glass, climbed up on the couch and captured it.

That's when I realize how incredibly amazingly COOL these creatures are. The pint glass became a means of holding it up close and studying it. The glass had a film of water on the bottom and Steve pointed out that we probably saved its life, as centipedes usually prefer moist, damp areas. The centipede pounded the walls for a second -- they have that amazing synchronization of their legs, like an assembly line of coordination -- then did the most curious thing: first, it tapped the sides of the glass with its antennae. Far from being flaccid appendages sticking out from its head, these things were muscular: he had total control and to prove it, formed amazing little intricate spirals at will. He then curled a single spiraling antenna down to his incredibly sharp horizontal fangs and ran it through them. He did this with each one over and over again. He was basically collecting the water and sampling it, and to watch him curl his antennae was indescribably fascinating.

He then got bored and started to claw the walls again. When he bent half his body over backwards as he looked around, that gave me the heebie jeebies again, and I was done. Blllluuuuuhhh. When he was at rest and doing cool muscular things, that was okay; but any unnecessary displays of unctuous flexibility made me histrionic. Steve got a moment's jolly from taking the pint glass and threatening me with it, and then he threw it out the window.

Oh man, that thing was cool. Terror and intricacy all wrapped up in this little segmented bundle. But if that thing had dropped on me, I would have freakin' lost it: Dear Mom and Dad, I'm writing you from the local asylum...