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I Screamed Like a Girl: The Day I Picked Up a Live Centipede

Published September 11, 2004

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

We’re far enough West now that desert creatures are showing up.

This morning I found my first giant centipede.

Giant black and orange centipede on the roadside in Wetumka, Oklahoma, 2004 — The centipede I thought was dead.

It was one of those giant black and orange ones, like the fake rubber ones they give out at fast food restaurants around Halloween.

There it was, right on the side of the road, lying there peaceful as road kill.

I thought it was dead.

First, I picked it up with gloves, just to make sure. Good, no moving legs or pincer.

Then, just to feel what a centipede feels like on bare hands, I shucked off my gloves and draped it into my hand. It stretched from finger to palm.

Cool! Magnolia had to check this out.

I stretched the beast out toward her nose. She leaned forward, gave a giant snort, and blew a blast of hot air into my palm.

Magnolia the pony sniffing a centipede held by Bernie Harberts in Wetumka, Oklahoma, 2004 — Maggie prefers grass.

Well, that woke the old centipede up and it started scrabbling all those legs across my hands. Oh, I screamed like a girl and threw the old bugger into the Bermuda grass!

Just so you know, a giant centipede waking in your palm feels like someone jabbing a row of sharp toothpicks into your hand. Not painful, just alarming.

An hour later I came across my first black tarantula.

I rode on by.

More about riding Woody and Maggie from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

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