showerhead I once lived in an apartment that saw two kinds of bug infestations. Bees one spring and thousand-leggers one summer. That summer tested me and tested me good.

If I came home late, I feared flicking on the light since the time I found a thousand-legger chillin’ out just above the switch. After that, I kept a little flashlight in my purse to survey the area for critters in the dark.

Another time one fell out of the dishwasher onto my bare foot, which triggered a spastic freak-out dance that my downstairs neighbor later told me made her wonder if I was going to crash through the floor and land in her lap.

The last straw was when one particularly ballsy thousand-legger tried to take a shower with me.

Soaking wet and washing my hair, I turned around and opened my soapy eyes to find a giant specimen crawling up the back end of the tub.

I let out the kind of scream suitable for any decent slasher movie. The kind of scream that comes from deep within and shocks you that you can even make a sound like that. Is that me? The kind of scream that should prompt all of my nearby apartment-dwellers to call 911. Don’t do that! I’m naked!

My first course of action was to pummel that thing into submission by shooting it with water and sending it down the drain. I jump out of the shower and aim the showerhead at my intruder. Die! Die!

What? It’s not moving.

Oh, wait. It is moving. Just not toward the drain.

Oh, nooooo. My little visitor evidently works out at the gym. Pilates much? Every single one of its creepy, crawly legs fought against the current and it was making remarkable progress up the tub wall. Of all the bugs in the world, I get Arnold Schwartzelegger.

A jet stream of water clearly wasn’t going to save me.

I was going to have to crush this thing with my bare hands. Well, not bare. These hands would have to be covered with a half roll of paper towels.

Dripping wet, I run off to the kitchen, trying not to slip on the floor, crack my skull on a counter, fall to the floor unconscious and have a new problem. Not the bleeding cranium, but returning from the ER with the knowledge that the freak insect is still in my apartment!

I pull at the roll of towels like I’m starting a lawn mower and scrape up enough courage to smash that thing with my paw — and then what? Where do I put it? No, not in the toilet. We know now water is no match. It swims!

It needs to go outside. I need an exit hatch. Yeah, yeah. An exit hatch. My bedroom window!

A woman on a mission, I dash to the bedroom with my enormous supply of Bounty towels. I thrust open a window and then head to the bathroom.

Stay cool. Breathe.

OK, Mr. Not Welcome Here, prepare to meet your Maker. And why, by the way, did your Maker make you? Are you good for eating other bugs? Is there something beneficial about you that only entomologists know about? Regardless, you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and you need to die today.

I position the wad of towels over Leggy McLegs and grab and squish with all my might. I spin around, run to the bedroom and toss the whole crushed-appendage mess out the window.

I am safe now. Safe from a thing that weighs less than a postage stamp, yet has the power to make a person a million times its size and weight turn into a quivering idiot. I don’t get it. That. Shouldn’t. Be.

OK. Now where was I? Oh, yeah. Taking a relaxing shower. Fat chance of that now or ever again during the Summer of a Thousand Legs.

Epilogue: I moved to a nice, bug-free townhouse that fall and I haven’t seen a thousand-legger since. It is bliss.

Stumble it!