An early morning visitor

At around 3:30 a.m. I (Sanjeev) woke up with a start. I sat up and felt I had been stung pretty bad by something. Ani also got up and we turned on the light and started dusting around. Ani mentioned that she saw something in the sheets and as I dusted the sheets a centipede slid out and started sprawling into the next room. I don’t know if it was because it looked posinous and creepy or it was because I was stung I instinctively picked up a shoe and squashed it. As I was about to squash it I was not sure if I should, it was away from us and not an immediate threat. Consequently, as the sting started feeling better (no more than what it feels like with a red ant bite) I started feeling worse for killing the centipede.

Ani was visibly shaken. The sisy house had been like a fortress of stone and concrete with every window and door lined with nylon netlon to even keep small insects out and here was a five inch visitor. She said it was a Jerry and something she ran away from as a kid. Perhaps, if I was as smart as her when she was a kid I would have been happy that it was running away from us and not created ant fodder. I let her know that my sting was feeling better didn’t feel life threatening. We took a picture of our ill fated visitor to show it to Anu and Krishna to confirm what it was and that there should be no long term effect of the sting. We applied some cream over the area and as we didn’t seem to be sleeping started talking about risk.

We convinced ourselves that the risk was no more than being hit in traffic and reminder ourselves that we were not even taking basic precautions like laying the mattress fresh and dusting it before we slept.

I also clarified my ideas of explaining voltages and currents using a water model of tanks, watermills and pipes of different dimensions for my next class.