Leslie yelled earnestly "Auntie, come here, auntie come here" repeatedly and when her aunt finally arrived, Leslie pointed out "There's a centipede, kill it!" to which her aunt replied "Oh Leslie.." and proceeded to try to find and kill the centipede. She saw it, chased it a bit, but then it ran off and escaped her. Leslie could not sleep under such conditions, and sought refuge in her aunt's room, yet still knew it was out there and could not rest even in the safety of another room, in the presence of her protective Aunt. I didn't involve myself with the situation -- I was already in bed, I wasn't asked to come help, and for Leslie I viewed it as silly for her to be so panicked about such a thing. Eventually she came down to me and asked me to come find and kill it, it had run from her room into her dad's room. Her cat came up to see what the commotion was about, but he walked past it completely oblivious to the insect as he walked past it. I gathered my blanket, went upstairs, got my bath robe and put it on, then dropped my blanket at the door to my uncle's room as a barricade in case it tried to dart out the door again. Then proceeded to carefully search about as much of the room as I could. The room is quite cluttered and I am very unfamiliar with it, seeing as though it is not my room, so even though I viewed the task as impossible, I gave my effort regardless. I didn't disrupt much in my search, for I had no intentions of being the one to piece the room back together after a thorough search, and in the work of cleaning the entire room, the insect would have long since left the area I'm sure. So after giving a valiant effort to find the bug to kill it, I admitted "I cannot find it." Leslie asked "What if it comes out tomorrow while no one is home?" To which I replied "What if?" Then she said "I'll run from it again.." but then thinking her logic through a bit more she realized "I'm going to get tired of being afraid of it." My response was "Eventually you probably will get tired of being afraid of it, and eventually come to face it, and defeat it." Her imagination had been running wild with images of it growing teeth and biting her viciously, or littering the stuff in her room with all kinds of grotesque monstrosities that only a centipede can bring. I came back downstairs after failing in my search, went into the kitchen to get some food, then came back and sat at the computer. While my computer was booting up, sure enough, I saw this small, multi-legged insect crawling across the floor. I quickly grabbed a nearby item, and smashed it thoroughly. it twitched and squirmed for a bit, then I called Leslie and told her I found it and killed it. After careful inspection of the validity of my statement of it being dead and verifying that it indeed was the centipede that had plagued her, she hugged me and said a meek "thank you," comforted that her foe had been defeated.
--so many millions of lessons there it's insane...-- i'll be dissecting this for weeks