Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Bed bug bites, skin, etc.
House centipede will eat bed bugs but may cause skin reactions.
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lieutenantdan
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Joined: Apr '07
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Posted 1 year ago
Thu Jan 17 2008 13:42:06
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House centipede will eat bed bugs but may cause skin reactions.
Do you kill them or let them be?
That is the question. -
I'm sorry but I would have to kill this creature! Its kinda scary looking!
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Most of us probably get very alarmed at seeing one. But if you can remain calm. If you see them a lot, doesn't it suggest that you have an insect problem at home? Also, I thought it's unlikely that they will bite you. But perhaps if you touch them... see this comment from persona in the FAQ.
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I personally don't mind seeing the odd one (all I ever saw). They eat all kinds of bugs. I would leave it be and assume it won't come towards me. OTOH, I suppose seeing a lot of them would be bad news!
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lieutenantdan
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Posted 1 year ago
Mon Jan 21 2008 11:43:52
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Last week I killed one that ran by me late at night while I was sitting on my couch, unfortunally it was before I found out that they eat bbs. I do know that they come in from the outside garden in the winter and they are scarry looking.
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Dan! You have to read the FAQs. We have had one about centipedes eating bed bugs for a long time. :-)
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lieutenantdan
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Posted 1 year ago
Mon Jan 21 2008 14:29:30
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Well I appreciate it but I saw it and killed it before I could research it.
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I'll take my centipedes and my carabids, thankyou. I sleep on a foamy on basement concrete floor where these critters are happiest and I'll still take all the help I can get. Damn BBs are far worse to my mind. Even if I die from a centipede bite, I'll still take them over BBs!
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Just a quick comment - biological control of BB's would require you not to use any chemical or physical mathods that would effect the hunters. Would people be willing to give up their routines in order to use centipedes?
David
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Nope, not I. Since I moved and didn't treat after the move, I am opting for nature now, but pesticides saved my blood-ridden skin at the last place. And plastic bags, and solvents, and celluloid tape etc. Got to love that life inhibiting/destroying technology eh. Woot!
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DanDaMan
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Joined: Feb '08
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Posted 1 year ago
Sun Mar 9 2008 22:20:54
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can you purchase house centipedes anywhere?
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Trust me, you dont want centipedes. I have them in my apartment, too, and have been dealing with them over the past year. They are almost as creepy as bed bugs. And they dont control our bed bug problem here, either. Plus they are VERY difficult to get rid of. They are one small step down the scale from a Bed Bug on the Creep-O-Meter.
Also, they dont bite but you cant assume that they'll just leave you alone, either. I've had one run across my leg before. It was a feeling I pray to sweet baby jesus every night to forget.
I just encountered one on my toilet yesterday (after terminix sprayed something special to get rid of them. well I guess it didnt work) I threw alcohol at it and I swear it backed up like it was going to hiss at me, and then ran away all crazy and mov
ing back and forth, looking like a tiny freakish roller coaster on an invisible track. Please, dont even think about it. Centipedes will only make your living space less livable. Just trust me on this one.
But if you still feel the need to import the creepy bastards, I can send you one gift-wrapped for $9.95. lol!
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lil_bit_obsessed
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Joined: Dec '07
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Posted 1 year ago
Sun Mar 9 2008 23:20:39
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awwwwwwww i love house centipedes! (okay, okay, no throwing tomoatoes people...)
seriously, i think they're cute. in fact i always used to love bugs until i came up against the dreaded bedbug. i was an odd child.
from what i've read (and yes, i'm a nerd that reads about bugs) they are harmless, and if you find one in your home you can just catch and release outdoors.
that having been said, i haven't seen a house centipede since i broke out the DE several months ago. so sad. i've had so many unintentional buggie casualties... :(
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I wish I could unintentionally off these suckers. Cute? They look like someone's moustache that fell off of their face and started running. It just don't seem natural. That's all I'm sayin.
By the way, what is DE?
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lil_bit_obsessed
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Joined: Dec '07
Posts: 495
Posted 1 year ago
Sun Mar 9 2008 23:38:04
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diatomaceous earth, it's a dust. check out the FAQs and search it on the forums. if you want to use it, make sure it's food grade, and wear a dust mask! only place in crack and crevice areas.
poor poor little house centipedes...
they do sorta look like a moustache. ;)
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DanDaMan
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Posts: 27
Posted 1 year ago
Sun Mar 9 2008 23:51:50
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I have no intrinsic problems with insects. I wouldn't mind house centipedes so long as I'm not covered in them or eating them. I DO have a problem with being covered in bites that itch. I would gladly take a harmless yet ugly looking insect predator over invisible bed bugs any day.
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fightorflight
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Posts: 692
Posted 1 year ago
Mon Mar 10 2008 6:10:54
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Oh geez, this is so hard but not: At the very top, winner by an unmeasurable longshot of insects I don't want - drumroll, statue please - BEDBUGS.
However, centipedes and earwigs? They're running a distant second. I don't think I'll ever get used to them either, but if you give me a choice on Fear Factor with earwigs and centipedes in one cage and bedbugs in the other, I will certainly choose the pedes & wigs. (Funny how bedbugs have made folks pretty much forget about the horror of roaches. Oh and I had the traumatizing flea infestation from hell when I was a kid and 3 bug bombs purchased with birthday money took care of that. That's the problem with BBs - there's no magic bullet to make it end, no closure.)
I've never had a problem with spiders, even though one gave me a nasty, honking necrotic bite once after I indicated I didn't want to share my bedroom with her.
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saosin
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Joined: Feb '08
Posts: 23
Posted 1 year ago
Mon Mar 10 2008 16:59:48
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yeah i read up on those suckers last night and found out that they can sting. its just very rare, thank god. the disturbing thing i read is that if they do sting you and you have a reaction, you might have that for life. it may never go away. wtf?
dude, a centipede just ran out of the roll of toilet paper in my bathroom as I was about to use some. i ran from the bathroom screaming with my pants around my ankles. i just can't stand this constant stress. *shakes head*
as for BBs making you forget the horror of roaches? yes. I have hated roaches all my life, but yesterday i saw a brown thing crawling on my wall and i was terrified that it was a bed bug. upon closer inspection i saw that it was a baby roach. i didn't even kill it. I raised my hand and said "Crawl on, brother." lmao
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DanDaMan
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Posted 1 year ago
Mon Mar 10 2008 19:37:30
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I grew up with house centipedes, I have never once been attacked by one. Mostly I did the attacking. You would have to have very thin skin to get stung and the skin on my feet is pretty thick as it is, the only place where they could bite.
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lil_bit_obsessed
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Posted 1 year ago
Mon Mar 10 2008 21:25:35
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saosin says: "dude, a centipede just ran out of the roll of toilet paper in my bathroom as I was about to use some. i ran from the bathroom screaming with my pants around my ankles."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
and that is all i can say to that. ;)
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old post but ranks high on google so I'll reply with my 2c
Before I moved here, I've never seen a centipede. They scared me shitless. You walk into a room, turn on the light, and on the wall is a little thing with countless legs just standing there, sometimes for an hour or more without moving.
BUT besides the fact that they look creepy, they aren't dangerous to humans. In fact, they seemed more afraid of me than I was of them. They never bit me, let alone gotten close to me, at least not noticeably.
I never saw them as being tough to get rid of either. RAID killed them (it didn't say it was for centipedes, on the can) in one shot, almost instantly. They would fall off the wall and their legs would literally start falling off. They can deattach their legs if they get trapped, so maybe the RAID somehow invokes that reflex.
Anyway, I got rid of them without really trying. I had a cat that would kill/eat any centipedes that remained low on the ground, and every week I BOMBED my house with RAID and left for about 5 hours (with the cat of course). I also burned tobacco (rolling tobacco from CVS/walgreens) in the house at the same time. The smell stuck around much longer than RAID and I doubt it was effective, but I had this idea that the nicotine would drive away the centipedes.
After about 2 months I ran out of RAID (lasted damn long), and stopped caring about centipedes so much, because I had read that they don't bother humans, and I really wanted to get over my phobia of them. Then months pass by and I realized I hadn't seen a centipede in years.
It has now been 2-3 years and I had to find a picture of them online to remember exactly what they looked like, so I personally DOUBT they're hard to get rid of. Disgusting? yes.
I doubt there is a correlation but I've recently discovered I have bed bugs. If I could get centipedes back in here I'd love to see if they would help with that problem.
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Heh. I leave them be... I can't help it, I think they're super cool. Though if my cats notice them, they're not nearly so kind.
From growing up in New Mexico I was conditioned to kill centipedes on sight, but as it turns out, these are the only sort of centipedes that don't have a poisonous sting -- at least not one that could harm humans or pets. (Bar, I guess, having an allergy or sensitivity to them, but I think that could happen with any insect -- there have also been discussions here about various sorts of spiders and beetles causing said reactions.)
I've always been a very "live and let live" sort of person, so knowing that they are harmless to us and potentially dangerous, in whatever small degree, to our unwanted housemates inclines me to let them go about their business. Of course I've never had them in significant amounts, just seen one occasionally. But it seems like if you eliminate their food source, they'll decide to move on anyhow. :)
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stricken
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Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 75
Posted 4 months ago
Mon Jul 6 2009 17:02:44
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I have not seen these centipedes of which you speak. But just last night I cracked my mother up by commenting, "I never thought I'd see the day when I was nostalgic for roaches."
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I like to think that the centipedes I've always been MUCH too afraid of bothering helped us kill any bed bugs in the walls. :P They certainly came out while fighting them. One night a centipede as big as my hand crawled away from me. When I looked over to it, it stopped, as if it FELT I was looking at it. Not saw, FELT. CREEPY.
But as scary as they are, they're just scary looking. They don't want anything to do with me, so if my cat doesn't get 'em, I leave 'em be. :)
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cantstandbedbugs
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Joined: May '09
Posts: 80
Posted 4 months ago
Mon Jul 6 2009 19:41:07
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dire - 3 hours ago »
They would fall off the wall and their legs would literally start falling off. They can deattach their legs if they get trapped, so maybe the RAID somehow invokes that reflex.So do the legs grow back? I'm scared of centipides for obvious reasons. When I was a kid we didn't have RAID in the house so I sprayed a centipide with hair spray and the legs stayed stuck to the wall while the centipide detached from them in a stuggle to get away. ill now that I think about it, it makes the hair stand on my neck. I wouldn't allow them to live in my home even if they do kill bbs. I might just capture them and set them free outside.
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twitchyscratchy
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Joined: Oct '09
Posts: 34
Posted 3 weeks ago
Sat Oct 31 2009 3:05:34
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LOL saosin!
i also have a CP problem. my fiend calls them "moustaches"! i'll have to tell her.
they are, in my mind, as creepy as BBs but in a different way. more menacing, less desperation-inducing. both are awful. i can't believe one ran across your leg. i would die. i hope you do forget.
emmm- they have very, very keen eyesight. chances are it did see/feel your reaction to it. they're top predators.
CPs do indicate bug problems, but can also indicate a moisture problem in a house. like mine.
all spring, summer and fall. god damn. -
wchicago
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Joined: Oct '09
Posts: 29
Posted 3 weeks ago
Sat Oct 31 2009 16:17:23
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i have to comment with my late night centipede horror story, just due to the timing in the bouce up of this post.
so two nights ago i'm awake (of course) at 4 am, in bed, lights on, glasses on, look around my white sheted bed, don't see any bedbugs. 2 minutes later is see something BIG moving on the bed, leap out of bed and sure enough, centipede (pinky finger sized, which for a bug, is pretty big). have you ever watched one hunt? they are fascinating. anyway, it killed what i think was a nymph on my bed (heretofore unseen by me) then traveled across the mattress and slipped under it onto the bed base (i have a metal platform bed -which i disassembled and thoroughly steamed <i thought> last weekend but i must have missed a spot given i assume he knew where he was going in terms of maybe finding more bedbugs? GRRR.
and no, i did not get back in bed that night :)
so -here is how i found out (the hard way) that murphys oil in bowls under bed legs is not so much of a good way to isolate one's bed (it gels and then anyone can happily walk across the bowl) *sigh*
but yay for centipedes (it ate a nymph! he and i are Bffs now, though hopefully -in the future unseen Bffs). i really REALLY don't want them in bed, but if they are going to eat bedbugs -ya know -peace to them. -
wchicago - 41 minutes ago » so -here is how i found out (the hard way) that murphys oil in bowls under bed legs is not so much of a good way to isolate one's bed (it gels and then anyone can happily walk across the bowl) *sigh*
Yes. I would not recommend Murphy's for bed isolation.
Per the FAQ, I don't recommend bed isolation for most people, but if you want to do it, my first recommendation would be climb-ups, and if they are not an option, tea tree oil if you do not have cats, mineral oil if you do or if you prefer it. I have not done this but others have repeatedly suggested those two oils.
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sickofbugs
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Joined: Mar '09
Posts: 14
Posted 2 weeks ago
Sun Nov 1 2009 17:22:56
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Just taking off mattress pad off my very good encased mattress covering, found a live centipede curled up in middle of bed. After reading about centipedes and how they eat bed bugs, this just scares me that I have brought bed bugs with me in my move.
I do have 2 tiny tiny red welts under my arm, but this could have been caused by shaving. Have been over the bedding (now in the dryer) and found no evidence. Went over mattress and box spring encasement and could find no clues, what with my very strong LED light and large magnifying glass. But then there is the huge problem with my eyesight, so I am left wondering.....
Why would a centipede be there? Thoughts and advice please. Thanks
sickofbugs
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Now I can live with centipedes....
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