He’s bright orange and won’t stand still long enough for me to count his legs. He’s an ugly little bugger is Haggis although no doubt lady centipedes find he has a certain je ne sais quoi. I’ll tell you one thing, he’s living dangerously coming in our house. If Mrs T. gets wind of his presence she’ll soon have me moving cupboards and pulling up floorboards. In hunt of Haggis. With a view to turning him into an orange splodge of the legless dead variety. 

Once you’ve lived with someone for a few years you get to know their likes and dislikes and I can confidently predict that friend Haggis is unlikely to figure prominently on Mrs T’s list of favourite things. Indeed, I reckon he’d be vying for bottom place with telephone salesmen, spiders and husbands that snore. 

Haggis is smart. Personally, I find it hard enough to walk straight without tripping over and I’ve only got two legs, so I can only look on in awe at Haggis as he scuttles across the floor without getting his feet in a muddle. Climbing over obstacles is no problem for him, he just surrounds them with legs until half of him is on the other side, then off he goes. 

Until Haggis turned up I never knew there was such a thing as a house centipede. This should come as no surprise because I’m one of those people that knows next to nothing about nearly everything. Not to worry, Scutigera coleoptrata (which means haggis in Latin), merits a whole page to itself in the Wikipedia, to which of course the centipede is related, the former being a many-legged encyclopaedia. 

I don’t care much for the Wikipedia. Because of it anyone can be an instant smart arse. For example, you can’t ask a civil question on a forum without somebody flashing up the relevant link before you’ve even had time to have a scratch and a fart. Instant access to information is taking the mystery out of knowledge and the magic out of learning. Not that Haggis cares.