“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I saw the first centipede the day that I moved in. My girlfriend and I were looking for toothpaste, and it sprinted out from beneath a box that I had lifted from the closet, gung-ho on biting my toe, or whatever centipedes do. I screamed, flung the box, and squashed it.
Incidentally, that’s how I found the toothpaste.
A month later and several centipedes more, I know now that they don’t typically bite unless you handle them. I know that these particular invertebrates are house centipedes. I know that they’re nocturnal. I know that they live up to 5-6 years unless they meet the butt end of my shoe, a sticky trap, or the vacuum cleaner. They like moisture, as they dry out and die without it. The females have longer hind legs. They eat bugs. All of this I wish I didn’t know, but I do now. It was necessary to learn.
My girlfriend and I laughed off the first
centipede. It was a housewarming gift. Who hasn’t been scared by one dashing
across the floor or trying to escape a bathtub? We slept easy that night, and for
almost three weeks after, there was peace.
“Balk the enemy’s power; force him to reveal himself.”
–Sun Tzu, The Art of War
It started with the disappearance of the ants.
After the first 12 days of my stay in the new apartment, I had come to terms that an ant would inevitably wander into the office or living room if I waited long enough, and I was not unduly concerned. They were harmless, they only came in the singular, and they never set foot near the kitchen.
And then they vanished.
I moved in on August 1st. The last ant that I ever saw climbed up my living room wall on the 12th, and the next centipede to reveal itself came on the 19th, as did the 2nd and 3rd centipedes.
In hindsight, the disappearance of the ants should have been the first clue that I had a centipede infestation. I hadn’t seen another one since that first fateful day, but I had unknowingly witnessed their presence.
Besides the ants, there were the tiny spiders that had made their homes in radiator corners and musty closets. I am not a fan of spiders, but these ones were small and mostly stuck to their own spaces. My favorite of the spiders was Jerry, the Bathroom Spider, who chilled under the sink and snacked on any fruit flies that wandered too close to his web.
I had noticed the spiders and they had noticed me, but we had a tentative pact and I never saw them in the bedroom, so it was fine.
Sometime in that third week, their webs started getting destroyed and the spiders, like the ants, vanished. This too, I looked upon with apathetic curiosity as I vacuumed away what had once been the homes of myhouse guests. As I suctioned each corner, it became apparent that most of the webs had been abandoned or torn, though; at that point, I knew nothing of spider habits. Maybe they just did that. Who cares? Good riddance.
On the night of the 19th, the enemies made themselves known. I was lazing on the futon watching a movie, and even that’s an overstatement. My mind was in fugue. The apartment was dark. I was thinking of nothing but the next day’s work, drawling through the tentative actions that I would take, when I stepped into the kitchen and spotted my 2nd centipede.
One thing you must know about me is that I am terrified of bugs. In elementary school, I used to share a room with my older brother. We had bunk beds, and I slept on the bottom bunk because I foolishly thought that it would be safe from the spiders. I thought that right up until I woke up with one on my chest.
So, when I spotted the centipede on the ceiling, I logically freaked out and hit it with a broom (later to be nicknamed The Broom of Impartial Justice). It fell onto the floor and started to run, but another swipe flattened it and the ordeal was over. I texted my girlfriend, I had a laugh, and I finished the movie.
Then one appeared in the bathtub. Then one ran
over my feet. Then they killed Jerry.
“Quickness is the essence of the war.”
–Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Sleep didn’t come easy on the night of the 19th, though it certainly came easier than it did on the nights to follow. I woke up once to go to the bathroom and, upon entering, I made sure to take the broom. I nudged the shower curtains and flushed the toilet. I hit the radiator a few times. Nothing. Thinking myself safe, I did my business and returned to bed.
For two nights after, all was quiet. I am certain, having learned of their habits, that they were present, but they did not reveal themselves to me, and I started to think of the night of the 19th as a string of bad luck. I loathed to mention it to my girlfriend, as she was set to sleep over on the night of the 22nd, and I didn’t want her to feel like the apartment was unsafe.
Que the 2nd bathtub centipede.
We made dinner, cleaned up, and sat down to a night of Breaking Bad and cheap wine. Centipedes were the last thing on my mind. We were in the 4th season at that point, and I was hooked and ready to watch Walter White make some bad decisions. We paused for more wine and Vicky entered the bathroom. And screamed.
I knew what it was immediately. What else could it have been? Sure enough, pacing the cracked basin of the bathtub was a centipede.
This one was bigger than the others that I had encountered up to that point, and it was running back and forth. I shuddered. The wad of toilet paper in my hand felt insufficient, so I resorted to chemical warfare. I grabbed the deodorant spray I kept on the counter and hitit with a noxious blast of cheap aerosol fragrance. While it curled up, stunned by the malignant odor of a middle school locker room, I smashed it and threw it in the toilet. Vicky and I rolled our eyes and sat back on the couch, but now, a piece of our brains wasreserved for watching for centipedes. They didn’t keep us waiting.
I caught a flicker of movement on the ceiling and looked up. One was crawling over us, booking it for the bedroom. Pausing the show, I went and grabbed the broom and seconds later, the centipede was another casualty in a war that has been raging for the past week and a half. We didn’t sleep easy that night and Vicky hasn’t slept over since. I don’t blame her.
For two days after, I lived in denial that it was a major
problem. I just wanted them to go away. Research told me that true infestations
were rare, but it was beginning to look like one. On the night of the 24th, I
saw 3, and that’s when I texted my landlord.
“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemies not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Let’s talk about where the centipedes are coming from.
Something that I have come to know in the past few days is that bugs will take any opportunity they can find to enter your living space. That’s why, in a well-fortified home, they are typically seen coming through drains, or through gaps in the basement windows. In my apartment, however, the walls are hollow and there are more access points than I can count.
Gaps near the radiators. Gaps in the baseboards. Gaps in the outlets. An entire valve system in one of the closets culminating in a big ol’ hole in the wall. The whole apartment is filled to the brim with entryways for the little bastards.
Let the caulking begin.
I slept at Vicky’s on the night of the 25th. For the first time, I saw a centipede crawl out from the radiator in my bedroom, and the prospect of having them scurrying on my ceiling while I slept was too much to deal with. I had bought traps and a (broken) dehumidifier that day, laid them down, and I STILL saw 3 centipedes that night. My spirit was breaking.
The landlord came by yesterday, the 26th. He was, and is, very very apologetic. He brought with him caulk, insect spray, and a tenacity that I appreciated as he went from radiator to radiator, filling the gaps. We were going to fill ineverything that we could to make the apartment unassailable, and perhaps then – if you’ll pardon my French – the centipedes would fuck off.
We caulked in the bedroom and in the office. We caulked in the kitchen and in the living room. We caulked in the closets, and we caulked near the bathtub and then we sprayed and sprayed and sprayed some more.
And yet the centipedes found a way.
One thing that I can say about the fortifications that we built yesterday is that at least, on the night of the 25th, I got a good idea about where we were weak. My landlord left around 2pm. I went to my parent’s house while the spray dried, and while I came back to the apartment for a little bit to fetch some work, I spent most of the afternoon at my parent’s celebrating my mom’s birthday. I headed back around 8 and Vicky came a bit later to bring me a bigger, working dehumidifier that my dad had found in the basement.
We set up the dehumidifier (centipedes dry out and die if there is no moisture), grabbed some snacks, and went to play a game in the living room. I expressed hope that we wouldn’t have any many-legged visitors that night. The apartment was fortified, after all. Sprayed. Sealed. Locked down. Then, while Vicky bent to inspect our handiwork in the kitchen, my worst fears were realized. A centipede flew out from beneath the radiator and ran past us, BAM, right into a sticky trap.
I learned 3 things yesterday:
- That the space under the radiator in the kitchen was only covered in mesh and leads directly into the floor.
- That the centipedes remained in the apartment and were apparently undeterred by the spray.
- That, when caught in a sticky trap, a centipede will tear off its own legs to escape, resulting in a slower, but no less terrifying creature.
We had two more visitors last night (that I saw at least). One ran out from beneath the radiator in the bathroom into the bathtub where it was promptly sprayed and killed. The second was chilling on the wall in my office when I went to check, and it didn’t move even when the paper towel took its life. A third, unseen, lost half of its legs to another sticky trap sometime in the middle of the night, as evidenced by the severed limbs I found on the adhesive in the morning.
The caulking definitely did help. Those holes needed to be
filled. Still, I think yesterday proved that despite our best efforts,
sometimes the enemy finds a way.
“Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you; this will diminish his enthusiasm.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
One note, before I finish this silly little blog post.
Something that you must know about centipedes is that they are not dangerous to humans. They don’t eat your food, they don’t try to attack you, and they don’t ruin your furniture. In fact, centipedes are helpful in that they ONLY eat other bugs.
I talked in an earlier segment about the disappearance of the spiders and ants. That, of course, is thanks to the centipedes, though it carries with it sinister implications.
Centipedes don’t typically infest. They are solitary hunters. That’s why, when one leaps out at you in a damp basement, you don’t really have to worry about others. It’s just eating the bugs. But, when there IS an infestation of centipedes, it means that they have found a plethora of food.
One of the first things that I did when I started researching centipedes was to vacuum my apartment. I cleaned every corner and destroyed every web. I hadn’t seen any other bug besides spiders and ants, and even those had long since disappeared. I figured that getting rid of their food would deter them, yet they still come.
Yesterday, while checking my traps, I found a small bug that I didn’t recognize in the bathroom. It turned out to be a silverfish, which DOES eat your food and, even worse for a guy with several hundred books, they love to dine on paper.
Perhaps the centipedes are holding another infestation at bay. Perhaps they are fighting a different, more terrifying enemy. Perhaps I should be thanking them for their service.
But I won’t, because there shouldn’t BE a bug infestation in the first place, and this needs to get sorted out NOW.
Also, they killed Jerry.
Pricks.
“There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In all seriousness, this ordeal has been extremely taxing on my mental health. I spend my days placing traps, cleaning, and waiting for nightfall. I am supposed to be working on a book right now with my writing partner, but I find that my thoughts keep returning to the centipedes. Once night does fall, all I can do is distract myself until the first one appears. My sleep has been light.
I have spent a lot of money and time on these disgusting little creatures that have earned both my respect and my ire. Today, my landlord will be back to fill in more holes, but I find that my optimism has worn thin. If this war does not end soon; if the enemy does not back down; then I see no other option besides an exterminator. Even then, I feel like I will still roam at night, checking the walls and ceiling for the little brown flash of legs. I will still tap on the radiator and move the curtains in the bathroom. I will keep their presence in mind.
If anything, I am writing this blog post as a desperate bid to turn this experience into something productive. They say that there can be no success without hardship, but I think that’s just something that people say to justify their ill experiences.
There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.
I certainly haven’t.
Thank you for reading,
Drew Mathieu
Epilogue
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Sun Tzu, who probably never went to war with centipedes
Praise be, the exterminator has arrived!
In an unprecedented act of chemical warfare, the perimeter of my domicile has been sprayed with a dehydration agent that staves off spiders, silverfish, and centipedes. Since the little buggers breath through their skin, they also tend to dry out extremely fast, especially if they run through a salt solution that actively saps moisture.
Thought I cannot claim total victory yet, I have seen a drastic decrease in the number of centipedes that have entered my apartment. The ones that come are small and stick mainly to the bathroom. I found one in the tub this morning, shriveled and barely alive. I almost, ALMOST, felt bad as I squashed it and threw it in the toilet.
I am slowly starting to calm down. While my eyes still flicking to the walls and ceiling once night falls, I am finding that they flick there less often than before. My sleep goes uninterrupted. When speaking about the matter, I am more prone to say that my bathroom is infested with centipedes than to say that my apartment is infested, and I hope that after another week more, I won’t have to say either.
May this peace last.