Mach 5 Eyelashes

I have never much like bugs and things. Not really. I used to catch fireflies, and play with crickets and grasshoppers and caterpillars and such. I even caught worms, and actually do like ladybugs, butterflies and praying mantises(eses) (mantii/mantae??... whatever.. more than one mantis!). I actually think they are pretty cool, and I particularly like dragonflies, too!

I don't, however, much like spiders or anything that has too friggin' many legs, or that can move unnaturally fast.

Now that I've made my likes and dislikes clear regarding my arthropodic friends and neighbors, I can set the stage for this particluar story....

I was living in Hannam-Dong, which is a subdivision of Seoul, Korea. I rented a basement apartment of a relatively modern house at the foot of a tremendously long flight of concrete stairs that led from the end of my street up the side of a steep hillside to the entrance of the Islamic mosque on top of the hill. From my apartment, I could hear the imam calling the faithful to work five times each day.

View of the Mosque from near my house

In Korea, the houses are heated by charcoal briquets called 'Yontan'. There is a yontan burner outside the house, and ducts which run under the floors, heating them. You have to change the yontan every few hours, which is great fun at 3:00AM in Februrary, by the way.

Yontan (charcoal for heating houses)

Most of the household living in Korea takes place on the floor, you sit on the floor, sleep on the floor, eat on very low tables set upon the floor, etc. According to custom, you remove your shoes upon entering a home or some other types of buildings.

So. Here I am, sitting on the floor in my apartment, in July, in Seoul, Korea. I have some food laid out on the low table in front of me, and I'm reading a paperback as I eat. Something made me glance up.. I had thought I detected movement off to my left. When I looked, I didn't see a thing, so I went back to eating and reading. Not more than a few minutes later, the same thing happened. Again, nothing. I bloody well knew I had seen something, so I started methodically scanning the walls. Directly in front of me, at my own eye level, I saw what looked like two false eyelashes glued together, back to back. I had never seen one of these things before, though I knew it was some sort of centipede. My Landlady was just outside my window, cleaning something or other, and I called to her and asked her what it was called. She stuck her big moonlike face in the window, peered in the direction indicated, then shook her head and said, "They bite, don't go near it. No good.... no good.", and, still muttering to herself, ambled off to return to her work.

Needless to say, I wasn't exactly thrilled with that new piece of info...

Mach 5 Eyelashes

So. They bite.

It has to go!

I looked around the room for something to arm myself with, but, understandably, I didn't really want centipede guts all over any of my belongings. Struck by an idea of sheer brilliance, I headed for the front door in search of a shoe!

When I arrived back on the battleground, the centipede looked ready to attack. I'm not sure how I knew this, as he/she/it (I think it was a she), hadn't so much as moved a leg. Nonetheless, she was definitely prepared to wage war. I was certain of it. She looked very warlike, in any case, bristling with all those legs, and, no doubt, sporting a pair of long venom-filled fangs hiding under there somewhere, waiting to sink into my unprotected flesh.

I stood there, armed with my shoe. She remained utterly motionless, poised and ready. The moment stretched out. She gazed into my eyes, and I gazed at her antenae.

Moving like a cat, I crossed the room in three quick steps. Coiling my arm I prepared to strike.

She chose that moment to move. And move she did! At about 183,000 feet per second! Swinging like a madman, I peppered her wake, missing with every one of a series of ineffectual strikes aimed at her as she streaked across the wall, doubled back and headed towards the ceiling. She slowed down to about 300MPH as she neared the junction of the wall and the ceiling, at which time I launched the next phase of my attack by throwing the shoe, which missed her by a scant four feet, as she angled down and to the left, and towards the floor, putting on a burst of speed and easIly outdistancing me. As she moved onto the floor, the first inklings of my imminent defeat began to pull at the edges of my mind.....

She decided to take the initiative at that point, obviously sensing my momentary weakness, and pressed her attack, heading straight towards me in a blur of rippling legs. Having been effectually disarmed by her ingenious ploy, in tricking me into throwing away my only weapon, I resorted to the only option left to me, other than immediate flight; hand to hand combat. Since I weighed in at somewhere around 200 lbs, and she weighed somewhere around a gram, I felt that I had at least a fair-to-midland chance of defeating her.

As she raced across the floor towards me, I expertly timed my strike, and, judging the moment exactly, I raised my bare foot above the floor and stomped down viciously with murderous intent.

She neatly sidestepped my attack, no doubt assisted by 300 friggin' pairs of legs, and immediately riposted by running up my leg! In the 8/10ths of a second that it took me to realize the sudden and detrimental change in circumstance, she had traversed my lower leg, rounded my thigh, and ran neatly up the leg of the nylon gym shorts that I happened to be wearing at the time.

This is where things begin to get a little fuzzy for me.

Trying to go in about eight directions at once, while simultaneously removing every strip of clothing I was wearing, I broke about three Olympic land-speed records doing laps around the room before tripping over the table and sending the remains of the meal in every direction. Asshole over tea-kettle, arms windmilling wildly in an attempt to retain my balance, I slipped in something that had spilled, and went down hard.

As I lay on my face, cheek to the floor, I felt the tickle of numerous smal feet running hell bent for election along my upper back. I was shocked to learn that the damned thing was barking, squealing, and shrieking at me as it pressed it's advantage. I sprung into action, and was half-way through the courtyard before I realized two disturbing facts:

   1). That I was totally naked, and;
   2). that the sounds were coming out of me rather than the centipede.

I took a few turns 'round the courtyard, still flailing ineffectually in an attempt to dislodge my unwelcome passenger before I came up with yet another plan;

On one of my high-speed passes I had spied the large plastic basin of cold water near the water spicket in the center of the courtyard, and as I rounded the corner of the house it came into view once again. I made a bee-line for it, and, grabbing one of the long handled dippers floating there, I began alternately dipping and spewing water all over everything in a frantic attempt to get the damnded thing off of me before it reached my face, which, I was certain, was the miserable creature's primary target.

So, I'm in the courtyard, ass-naked, flinging water all over everything and anything ... I think I may have even gotten a few drops on me, when the landlady decided to come outside and see what all the commotion was about. She took one look, executed an excellent text-book about face and disappeared back inside her house, at which point, it occurred to me to how the whole thing must have looked, and I quickly decided to head back inside.

Before I could move a step, however, she was back outside and obviously heading in my direction, fat little legs pumping madly. She walked straight up to me, unceremoniously plucked the centipede off of my shoulder, where it was still scurrying around, and nonchalantly tossed it to one side. She then gave me the once over, handed me a towel, and without a word, headed off to get started on yet another unending landlady task.

I will swear that that centipede turned and laughed at me before it disappeared into a crack in the stone wall that bordered one side of the courtyard.

As I stood there, utterly shamed and defeated, the Imam's voice began calling the local muslim congregation to prayer, which I took as a cue to head inside to start cleaning up the disaster that I had made of my house during the recent warfare with the centipede.

I learned to pick my battles that day, and I now know that a species, no matter how small, or, from my point of view, alien or ugly, doesn't last for tens of thousands of years without learning how to survive.

I think it was a good lesson for me, not to mention a pretty good-sized serving of humble pie.