It could only happen to me!

So some of you may remember the morning of graduation in 2000 when I awoke and found a bug in my ear. Well, I've just arrived back from Puerto Rico (which was pretty cool by the way) and wanted to post a new little friend that I made that totally tops my bug in the ear story. It was 3:30am when I was awoken from a dead sleep by a big pinch on my arm. Imagine my surprise when I turn on the light and see this thing slithering across the floor under the dresser. I then proceed to FR-REAK out! I go and get my shoe from the front door and curl up sitting up on the other bed in my room. I finally say," this is ridiculous," and move to my original bed to start my research on what the heck had just bitten me. Fortunately my Palm actually was connecting to the internet for the first time in days, so I start my googling. I start with millipedes, but it doesn't quite look like my attacker. So I move on to centipedes and sure enough, there's a picture of my not so little nemesis. As I'm doing this, the thing slithers across the room from the bed I had just been curled up on! So I throw my shoe at it and stun it. I then throw it again and see some bug juice come out. It makes an awful crunching sound when crushed by the way. At this point I don't really know if that was the original culprit because the one that bit me had gone under a dresser originally...so I'm still freaking out that there could be more than one. I decide to continue my research about my little friend to see just how freaked I should be and if I needed to go wake my friends up and find a doctor. After all my research the answer was that if I was prone to anaphylatic (spelling?) shock, then I would be dead. Fortunately for me, I'm not, so it just mimicked a really really bad bee sting which sent radiating pain shooting up my arm for a few hours. It still wasn't that comforting to read the words "very small, extremely venomous front pinchers" as I was researching. Apparently this monstrosity can eat birds and mice and stuff! About 5am my friend's husband wakes up to go to the bathroom and sees my door wide open and my lights on. He goes to the bathroom (fortunately he had had the presence of mind to put some clothes on) and comes out to see why the heck I'm still awake. So I tell him my story as I'm sweating in bed covered by a sheet head to toe for protection. He goes to pick it up and put it in the toilet, but I sternly tell him to leave it there as a symbol to any other creatures that could be lurking that I am a force to be reckoned with! Yeah real scary I was as I lay in bed not wanting to move and definitely sleeping with the lights on. So I finally decide that I've got to get some sleep, so I start praying for no more centipedes to bite me that night. The next morning I of course have to recount the whole debacle to my friend Cheryl and then proceed to show her the thing. It was about 7" long and when we went to see it, it was still moving. Fortunately I had crushed it's back end, so it hadn't moved positions, but the front had definitely replumped and it was trying to move slowly. It was at that point we decided it was okay to flush it so we wouldn't have to freak out if we came back from snorkeling and it was gone. Unfortunately we didn't have the presence of mind to preserve the image for posterity, so I have done some research and found one myself. This one isn't nearly as big as my assailant, but you'll get the picture. Needless to say, I slept with the lights on the next night and had Seth check under all furniture and crevices before I even thought about sleeping. Again... it could only happen to me.