Ya'll. He tried to eat a millipede. I'm not talking about those annoying little tiny bugs that you find curled up and dried out in your basement. I'm talking big ol' nasty, long as my ring finger, fat as my pinky, 'why, Oh Lord, did you create this thing?' millipede. I'm talking this:

And John tried to eat it. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. Let me set the stage a little bit. Everyone in the house woke up in a decent mood. We had breakfast and Derek went off to help his dad cut grass at various places. Me and the kids are at home waiting on my parents to get here so we could all go to the extension day thing at the Auburn Agriculteral Extension down the road from us. I'm doing some couponing research on the computer and the kids are semi-quietly playing around me. Blue's Clues is playing in the background. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, John starts screaming his head off. I whirl around and he is crawling in random circles on the floor behind me, drooling everywhere. What in the world! I pick him up and he's got this substance on his face that at first I thought was blood. 'Oh my gosh! He's bitten something sharp, where is it? Where is the sharp little devil that has cut my son's mouth! Hm, maybe the substance is from this brown crayon right here by my foot...holy crap! It moved! Its not a crayon! Its a millipede!'. You can imagine my panic at that moment. I had no idea if they were poisonous, if I needed to be rushing off to the ER or what. I knew I needed to have some info before I called anyone so I turned back to the trusty computer (after, of course wiping off the goo on John's face with soap and water...by this time, his upper and lower lip on the right side was swelling....always a good sign). According to several sites, they are not poisonous, but when provoked, they do squirt (lovely mental picture) an irritating brown substance. Okay. So why is his mouth swelling and why does he have a red spot on his face?! I start calling people. I start with Steve because he's been around the block a few times and I figured he might know a little about bugs. No answer. Okay. I call Derek. No answer. Enter subfreakout mode. I call Laura. She tries to sound calm, but I know she's freaking out on the inside. She starts calling around trying to find the menfolk and I call the pediatrician. 'Hm' says the nurse I talk to. I've never heard of that. You might want to call Poison Control. Hang on, let me look in my book' (yeah, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside) Okay, I've talk to Dr. Simpson and he says you should have anything to worry about. Just watch him for difficutly breathing and vomiting'. Great. I finally get in touch with Derek. We talk things over and decide to obey Drs orders. My parents arrive, look at the situation and we all load up to go to the extension thingy. It was no fun for me because I spent the entire time talking to various people that are knowledgeable about nature and who knew...millipedes can sting or bite kind of like a wasp. That would explain the screams. The swelling seemed to be getting worse, so mom and I left to go find some benedryl. The side effect of sleepiness never kicked in. Eventually the swelling did go down and now we're left with brown stained lips and the part that swelled the most look so nasty. But, he'll recover. I'm hoping that he learned his lesson. If a giant bug (or any bug for that matter) crawls past, just let it go. Its not fast food.