Caution: This post contains gross bug pictures.
Last month, my friend Megan (from Grove City College) invited me to join her monthly writing prompt, "A Word with You". Each month, a new word is chosen and the goal is to write about something that relates to the word. Megan's blog is adorable. Here's the link explaining the original idea back in January and then here's the link for February's post. I love the idea and told her I'd gladly join this month. This month's word is ORDINARY.
Well, my story loosely relates to the word. Last night, I was reminded of the "ordinary" critters that live among us here in Hawaii. Yesterday, trash went out, so Dan (being the superior husband that he is) took out the trash when he got home from work last night. He was out there for longer than usual and when he came in, he looked as if he had just seen a ghost. He was holding out his hands (think $5-dollar-foot-long, but not quite that big) to show the size of the centipede that he had just seen under our trash bin!! My immediate question was, "Did you kill it?!" He, of course, did (which is why he was outside for so long). He had rolled over it several times with the trash bin, and then cut it with scissors. Killing a centipede here is no easy task. They don't die. To ensure death, cutting them is often required. See, these are not the normal centipedes that you think of. They're huge. And their bite is extremely painful and can be very dangerous. And they're just awful. Awful.
Now, okay, I know every geographic region has some type of annoying pest or critter you occasionally run into. And while I know I can be a bit dramatic at times, I can deal with little house spiders or ants or anything relatively small (that does not come with a dangerous threat). But when you think of Hawaii (or at least when I thought of Hawaii prior to moving here), you think of palm trees and sunshine and turquoise water - not of ginormous and dangerous critters. Right?! These are the kinds of things that make living in Hawaii and vacationing in Hawaii very different.
Well, let me tell you. I was NOT prepared for these critters when we moved here - especially in the very first week of living in our apartment, when THREE (yes, three) horrible creatures made their debut in our home. As if to say, "Hey, welcome to Hawaii. We live here, too. Good luck." I remember it so clearly.
Visitor #1: The cane spider.
It was our first Saturday morning in the apartment (July 26). Dan was sleeping because he had just come home from working an overnight shift. I got up early and planned on quietly doing laundry and unpacking things around the house while he slept.
Our laundry machine is in the garage and you have to go outside to get to the garage (silly). Without my glasses on, I moseyed downstairs with the laundry basket, but froze in my tracks before I could make it out the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something HUGE above the front door. I dropped the basket and ran upstairs to get my glasses. Could it be what I thought it was? Yes. Sure enough, it was a HUGE spider (think skinny tarantula and definitely the biggest one I had ever seen)!
Panicking, I immediately called my dad because I didn't want to wake Dan up. My dad gave me practical advice, but the problem was that I knew nothing about the spider. What if it jumped? What if it bit? And it was above our front door, so I would have to stand on something (and get uncomfortably close to it) in order to "hit" it with a shoe or something, as my dad suggested. He also suggested bug spray, but we had just moved so we didn't have anything!
Now, I had gone to the other room while I was talking to my dad because I again didn't want to wake Dan up, but when I returned to the stairwell, my worst fear came true - I DIDN'T SEE THE SPIDER ANYMORE! I immediately got chills and wondered where in our home it was crawling around. But then, thankfully, I spotted it. It had squeezed itself between the molding and the wall.
 |
| The gecko, a cute, harmless Hawaii critter. If only they were all like this... |
Last month, my friend Megan (from Grove City College) invited me to join her monthly writing prompt, "A Word with You". Each month, a new word is chosen and the goal is to write about something that relates to the word. Megan's blog is adorable. Here's the link explaining the original idea back in January and then here's the link for February's post. I love the idea and told her I'd gladly join this month. This month's word is ORDINARY.
Well, my story loosely relates to the word. Last night, I was reminded of the "ordinary" critters that live among us here in Hawaii. Yesterday, trash went out, so Dan (being the superior husband that he is) took out the trash when he got home from work last night. He was out there for longer than usual and when he came in, he looked as if he had just seen a ghost. He was holding out his hands (think $5-dollar-foot-long, but not quite that big) to show the size of the centipede that he had just seen under our trash bin!! My immediate question was, "Did you kill it?!" He, of course, did (which is why he was outside for so long). He had rolled over it several times with the trash bin, and then cut it with scissors. Killing a centipede here is no easy task. They don't die. To ensure death, cutting them is often required. See, these are not the normal centipedes that you think of. They're huge. And their bite is extremely painful and can be very dangerous. And they're just awful. Awful.
 |
| Last night's victim. I went out to see it this morning. |
Now, okay, I know every geographic region has some type of annoying pest or critter you occasionally run into. And while I know I can be a bit dramatic at times, I can deal with little house spiders or ants or anything relatively small (that does not come with a dangerous threat). But when you think of Hawaii (or at least when I thought of Hawaii prior to moving here), you think of palm trees and sunshine and turquoise water - not of ginormous and dangerous critters. Right?! These are the kinds of things that make living in Hawaii and vacationing in Hawaii very different.
Well, let me tell you. I was NOT prepared for these critters when we moved here - especially in the very first week of living in our apartment, when THREE (yes, three) horrible creatures made their debut in our home. As if to say, "Hey, welcome to Hawaii. We live here, too. Good luck." I remember it so clearly.
Visitor #1: The cane spider.
It was our first Saturday morning in the apartment (July 26). Dan was sleeping because he had just come home from working an overnight shift. I got up early and planned on quietly doing laundry and unpacking things around the house while he slept.
Our laundry machine is in the garage and you have to go outside to get to the garage (silly). Without my glasses on, I moseyed downstairs with the laundry basket, but froze in my tracks before I could make it out the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something HUGE above the front door. I dropped the basket and ran upstairs to get my glasses. Could it be what I thought it was? Yes. Sure enough, it was a HUGE spider (think skinny tarantula and definitely the biggest one I had ever seen)!
Panicking, I immediately called my dad because I didn't want to wake Dan up. My dad gave me practical advice, but the problem was that I knew nothing about the spider. What if it jumped? What if it bit? And it was above our front door, so I would have to stand on something (and get uncomfortably close to it) in order to "hit" it with a shoe or something, as my dad suggested. He also suggested bug spray, but we had just moved so we didn't have anything!
Now, I had gone to the other room while I was talking to my dad because I again didn't want to wake Dan up, but when I returned to the stairwell, my worst fear came true - I DIDN'T SEE THE SPIDER ANYMORE! I immediately got chills and wondered where in our home it was crawling around. But then, thankfully, I spotted it. It had squeezed itself between the molding and the wall.
I was confident of two things: First, I was not going to wake Dan. Second, I was not going to kill the spider. My solution: sit on the stairs and watch the spider until Dan woke up.
I sat for almost two hours.
I updated my Facebook status to this: Dilemma: biggest spider I have ever seen is downstairs (like a roll of duct tape, huge) + Dan is still sleeping (he had an overnight shift last night) and then Googled large, skinny, spiders that live in Hawaii. I concluded that the spider was a cane spider. And I read mixed reviews. Some said they're harmless and fine to let live in your home. But others said they bite and can be dangerous. Either way, I knew that thing was not going to stay alive in our home. And I cannot tell you how happy I was when I heard Dan get up. I barged into the bathroom and completely overwhelmed him, I'm sure!
Dan doesn't like spiders any more than I do, but he was brave and brilliant. His solution was actually something I had thought of, but didn't have the guts to do. He used our little hand-held vacuum and sucked the thing up.
However, neither one of us were satisfied. What if it crawled out? What if it stayed alive? So, brilliant husband soaked cotton balls with nail polished remover and jammed them into the end of the vaccuum. Cruel? Maybe. Sure way to kill the spider? Definitely.
The thing wiggled for hours. But then it finally died. We emptied the vacuum and examined the critter more closely. G-R-O-S-S!
Visitor #2: The cockroach
As if that morning was not traumatic enough for me, later the SAME DAY, I came across a huge cockroach in the bathroom while unpacking. Hawaii cockroaches are not the nasty little black cockroaches you think of when you think of an unclean house or something. They're nasty big flying cockroaches that just live here (and apparently like cardboard and since we had just moved, we had lots of cardboard boxes). Our vacuum/nail polish remover got a lot of use that day.
Visitor #3: The centipede (which makes the other two seem harmless)
The next day, (yes, same weekend) Dan went to take a shower, but he was faced with our third disgusting visitor. A huge centipede was lining the shower wall. I didn't even want to see it. I couldn't bear to see it after the weekend we had. He killed it. I trusted it was gone, and it was.
 |
| Not "the" shower centipede, but another one we later found in the garage. At least it was dead when we found it! |
Let's just say, I was not okay. I could not sleep that night. I emailed our landlord several times. It would have been one thing if we had seen these bugs outside. But they were IN OUR HOUSE. And we had only been there less than a week. So immediate action was taken. And I survived.
Important: Before you think our home is infested with awful critters, let me assure you that we do not (and never did) have a pest problem. Thankfully, I can count on one hand the number of living critters we've actually seen while living here the past 8 months. But just to be safe, we are doing everything possible to make sure we're bug-free. Our landlord sprays the yard once a week. Additionally, we hired professionals to treat the house inside and out every other month. And...I occasionally go around like a crazy person spraying with household sprays. You can never be too safe, in my opinion.
Ugh! I have chills just writing about these horrible bugs. And I sure hope your "ordinary" critters are not nearly as bad as the ones in Hawaii. Pros and cons of living in "paradise" I guess...
Keep smiling...
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