A little shriek came from the bathroom. Hmm, should I investigate? No need to. Fern immediately emerged from the bathroom of our new, but filthy, hotel room and informed me that something just peeked its head out of the drain in the floor of the bathroom. Well, what was it? She didn’t know for sure, but it was big and creepy. Like a mouse? No. She just didn’t know. I was certainly curious.
It didn’t seem like anyone had stayed in this particular room for a long time. It was dusty and dirty and there were cigarette butts in the trash can. The hotel was large and cavernous – dark, empty concrete hallways with nobody staying in them. The season was winding down in Keylong and soon the hotel would close for the winter. Anything could be living undetected up there. Why would we choose such a place? The amazing view.
I went into the bathroom and filled the large bucket, which took the place of a shower, with water and dumped it all down the drain. That should take care of it. We could relax now. A few minutes later I was in the bathroom again and I saw it crawl right out of the drain and climb up the wall. It had one hell of a grip to stay put through five gallons of rushing water. Maybe it had a little spot underneath the drain where it could get out of the way. It must have been a little shaken because it just stopped there while I looked at it and took a picture of it. Never seen anything quite like it.
It was obviously in the centipede family but it was like a centipede with cockroach and spider genes spliced into it and then fed nuclear waste and steroids for a couple of years to help it fill out. This thing was large. And somewhat intimidating. It’s body was about two to three inches long but its legs formed an oval that was much larger. One thing was for sure. Neither Fern nor I would be able to sleep that night as long as that creature was hanging out in our room.
For some reason I wouldn’t hesitate to end the life of an ant, cockroach, or mosquito but spiders are different and I wasn’t quite sure where centipedes fit in. It was too unique for me to kill it and I was a little impressed that it had survived my attempt to wash it away. This fellow deserved to live, which meant that I would have to catch it and release it outside.
A decent size transparent vessel would be needed to trap it on the wall and ideally a stiff flat piece of cardboard to slide behind it and serve as a lid for the vessel. Unfortunately we didn’t have anything like that so I hurriedly looked around for a new strategy. What I didn’t know was how fast this thing would move once it was on the defensive. Could it jump? Would it sprout wings and breathe fire on me? I didn’t want to accidentally injure it and I definitely didn’t want it to get on me. Eventually I decided to flick it into an empty water pitcher with a piece of paper. There was a lot of room for error but I got lucky and once it was in the pitcher I could just jiggle it around to keep it from climbing the sides of the pitcher.
I took it out to the balcony and Fern and I watched it for a moment before I dumped it over the railing, four floors up. It’s legs undulated gracefully and formed a natural parachute as it slowly glided down to the ground. It almost reminded me of the way a cuttlefish swims. Once it was gone, I was glad to have seen this animal and equally glad that I didn’t end up harming it. We could only hope that it didn’t have any friends or family to come looking for it in our room.
jim@snorkelbandits.com