Millions of Millipedes

I call them curly worms because when you touch them, they roll into a perfect spiral. It is an amazing feature, well designed, and rock solid when you roll them. It makes very little sense in a survival capacity, unless preventing the loss of one of your thousand legs is your highest priority. But not much about these bugs is understandable to me.

Three years ago we had an infestation of millipedes that had me thinking we had bought a house on a bug thoroughfare. I remember Phil howling in frustration at the number of bugs surrounding him in bed and everywhere in the house.

And let me tell you, a thousand legs is tickly. When a millipede climbs into bed with you, you don't really feel it cruising up alongside your leg until it "stands" on tiptoe and kind of taps around like Mr. Magoo trying to find a door... in your leg. It's a friendly knock, not a bite, not malicious in any way. And it's aggravating as heck. Then multiply it. And put it in your hair. And then along your arms, torso, hands, feet...

And multiply it.

For a couple of months now, our carpet has looked like the pacific arena for a millipede flotilla. One night I got up to turn off lights (life with teens) and counted 49 millipedes cruising the floor. They assume the same general trajectory for some reason, and seem to have a plan of attack.

For all their legs, unlike centipedes, they don't race around. Maybe their knees knock or there is a leg-length to body ratio involved here. They smell reminiscent of creosote, and David discovered that some creature (weasels? foxes? I forget) in the wild will rub itself with them to keep mosquitoes away. Well, isn't that good news? We don't have to deal with mosquitoes if we'll just sidle up to our tiny bullet trains on chorus line legs.

In our sleep, we can hear the plink of millipedes who have lost their grip climbing the aluminum sliding door frame, or the glass of the bathroom mirror, or the ceiling.

Each night David gives himself curly worm detail every fifteen minutes or so. He taps the troops to make them curl, then gathers them on a scoop, and hurls them out the door. We both secretly hope that the flight or landing does them in, but can't bring ourselves to actually do the deed. Well, except for flushing them. This provides us with nightmare material since they apparently survive just fine under water and pretty much cruise the commode once tossed in. They signal a thousand tiny shaka while they swim around like, "Yo! Water." We have tried keeping count as David hunts. Each night we stop in the thirties somewhere early in the evening. Who really cares, after all?

What I am hoping is that this too will end. It ended three years ago when I didn't think it would. I know now that it's not local to our house, since our favorite walking trail/street is littered with the remains of roadkill millipedes.

I also remember from three years ago that about a month after relief came from millipedes, we had a series of months that were filled with tiny black flies that got into everything, peppering the sink with black dots. Is this what to expect next?

As I write this, a millipede is cruising the top of the sofa while another just rounded a corner on a seat cushion. One dropped from the ceiling onto our footrest with a thwack, about a foot away from my cup of tea. A millipede aligns itself with the edge of the remote control and then disembarks. Several millipedes were milling around on the floor, and have since disappeared in the vicinity of under my chair. I find myself scratching my head reflexively, then my back. This time, I'm not so sure it will ever end. There are so many of them!