In which the author discovers how many Barnard baddies it takes to kill one bug. Content warning: graphic images of insects

While 600 W 116th Street is definitely one of the nicer Barnard dorms, it does have its fair share of New York City pests. I had my first hands-on encounter with one this past Sunday night when two of my suitemates and I faced off against a centipede the size of my hand. 

After standing on the subway for close to an hour, I was looking forward to the relative peace and relative cleanliness of my dorm. Unfortunately, I was welcomed home to neither. Stepping into the bathroom, I came face to face with the biggest centipede I had ever seen in my entire life, who had apparently made its home in our shower. My immediate reaction was to shriek and run out of the bathroom as fast as I possibly could. My suitemates came sprinting, thinking something was direly wrong. Then they all shrieked, too. We must have scared the centipede because it began scuttling around our shower at a pace that could rival the Flash. We all reacted: one of us grabbed a broom, the other Clorox gel, and one of us ran away like a coward (yes, this was me). 

Then came the planning: How would we kill this gross intruder? Mr. Centipede was crawling on the floor, up the walls, and on the shower curtain. We needed to get rid of it and fast. Thus ensued the murder of our new but short-lived roommate. Apparently, it does take at least three Barnard girls to kill one bug. 

When we were finished, it looked like a murder scene. Bleach was squirted all over the floor, and the centipede’s corpse lay in a puddle of soap bubbles. The tools used to kill it were as follows: Febreze, Clorox spray, Clorox gel, and a broom. After we finally killed the bug (this took 20 minutes), we had to figure out how to remove it from the floor of our shower (this took another 20 minutes). We attempted to sweep it with the broom, then tried to scoop it up to flush it down the toilet, but all three of us were way too grossed out and couldn’t follow through. Finally, I had the idea to remove the drain cover and let the shower run until the corpse went down. Unfortunately, it was at this moment that your author’s shampoo bottle fell directly onto the dead centipede. We started shrieking again. I was forced to gingerly remove the bottle from on top of the bug and pray that the bottle was clean (I dunked it in bleach post-murder). Eventually, the centipede did disappear down the shower drain, hopefully to never be seen again. This was a wholly traumatizing experience that none of us want to repeat, ever. 

Our step-by-step process, in case anyone needs some bug-killing advice: 

Step 1: Shriek. Freak out. Lose your marbles. Pretend vomit. Run away.

Step 2: Compose yourselves. 

Step 3: Grab the necessary weapons. This includes a Febreze spray bottle, a broom, and both Clorox spray and Clorox gel. 

Step 4: Steel your nerves and walk back into the bathroom. 

Step 5: Repeat step one. 

Step 6: Repeat step four.

Step 7: Haphazardly spray bleach and swat with broom. 

Step 8: Run away again. 

Step 9: Peer around the door to see if the centipede is dead.

Step 10: Gag at the bug corpse. 

Step 11: Brainstorm how to remove it from the shower. 

Step 12: Try plan A, to remove the bug by scooping it up and flushing it down the toilet. 

Step 13: Plan failed due to disgust; run away again. 

Step 14: Begin plan B by removing the drain cover. 

Step 15: Plan goes south; shampoo bottle sacrificed to the centipede corpse. 

Step 16: Pick up the bottle by its very edge and throw it to the side without disturbing the corpse. 

Step 17: Turn on the shower without the handle coming off (this never happens). 

Step 18: Wait 10 minutes to check if the centipede is washed down the drain. 

Step 19: Breathe a sigh of relief when you see that the bug is gone. 

Step 20: Pray this never happens again. 

Bathroom Images via Author