August 31, 2005

And now . . . this - Aug. 31/05

Ewwwwww . . .

We have centipedes here in Ottawa, and they sometimes get into the house. As nasty as they are (and hard to catch), they rarely get longer than about an inch and a half. I hate leggy insects, so this would be enough to induce a nervous breakdown:

Aaron Balick expected to find a tiny mouse rustling behind the TV in his apartment. Instead, he found a venomous giant centipede that somehow hitched a ride from South America to Britain.

"Thinking it was a mouse, I went to investigate the sound. The sound was coming from under some papers which I lifted, expecting to see the mouse scamper away," the 32-year-old psychotherapist said Wednesday. "Instead, when I lifted the papers, I saw this prehistoric looking animal skitter away behind a stack of books." . . .

The next day he took it to Britain's Natural History Museum, which identified the insect as a Scolopendra gigantea - the world's biggest species of centipede.

[Full Story]

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