Mukade!

Mikame is wonderful. I really love it, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, except for this. This is the Mukade, or 8" (20 cm) centipede that haunts southern Japan. Apparently they love our house, and that's not good. Hania told me the girl that lived here before us was bitten so many times she had to buy a raised bed to replace the Japanese futon she was sleeping on. (I guess sleeping on the floor makes you easier to prey on.) And it's bite isn't just like a bee-sting either. I've been told the Mukade packs quite a punch. When bitten, the area around the bite swells up and turns bright red, then the venom goes for your lymph-nodes, while finally leaving you with a fever for the next few days. It has even been known to take-out the odd old person or baby. As you can tell, I'm pretty scared of them, and it doesn't help that I've already seen three in the house. I killed each of them, but it was more work that I'd expected. Unless you hit the head, they just get angry and run around as you try to smash them. The best way so far is to kill them with hot water. They die quickly and in one piece, but how often do you have a pot of water boiling in the middle of the night?