Tuesday, July 11, 2006

eeeewww again

remembering that i am beginning to be an insect lover (beneficial insects only), but there are some bugs that still freak me out. such as this one.

so can someone tell me what type of bug this is? this one was crawling on my ceiling, and they have been plaguing my existance ever since i moved from minnesota to michigan. and i cannot find any information on the internet or in my parent's bug book. reminds me of the bad alien/bug in men in black. apparently it's very prevalent in michigan homes (most of my coworkers have them too), especially the older ones.
oh, can anyone also tell me (and my coworker who has them also) how to get rid of them? other than my cat or dog (my home is relatively bug free as my animals tend to eat them all) running around chasing it, toying with it, and finally eating it. although i think they taste bad since they always seem to spit it out (maybe they taste like peas). i would just leave them to the pets, but they sorta freak me out.

6 comments:

Kristin said...

You left MN and didn't see any there? I am in MPLS, have a 1927 house and have these awful yucky bugs. They seem to come out in the dark.
Their legs still twitch once you kill them! EWWWW! However, my cat likes to eat them.
So from what I know they are either centipedes or millepedes. In any case I hate them.
I like your blog. It came up right after mine on with the "next blog" button. I will visit again.
check mine out if you wish
http://wwwargentephoto.blogspot.com
Happy Gardening!
Kristin

Stunned Donor said...

Looks like a silverfish to me, but it has too many legs..hmmmm.

Annie in Austin said...

Rachelle, that looks like a centipede to me, too. We had them in the basements in Illinois. Because insects are six-legged, centipedes aren't classified with insects, but belong to the arthropods, in with the spiders. They eat insects, which is cool. Not cool to run into them accidentally, though!

Here's a place to read more:
Centipedes

Anonymous said...

Here's more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_centipede

I had them in a rental house in New Hampshire. I was SO creeped out the first time I saw one. However, I kind of feel better after reading the Wikipedia article - I guess these guys eat the annoying bugs that are around the house. Hmmm, almost makes me want some for the fungus gnats I have in my houseplants... NOT.

Christa said...

I see these inside once in a while, too. Eeeeeewwww!

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I had these an older house I bought. I had never seen it before and was also freaked. I learned they are our friends in that they don't bite or get into our food. They actually feed on spiders like the brown recluse. Since we spotted many of those often as well, I opted to let them live till I could rid the spiders. It always made my skin crawl to let one escape. But the spiders did quit coming.