centipedes???Frogs????

Hello Lora,

We have both 🙂

VI Centipedes (called gongolos here) pretty much stick to one spot, so if your daughter and dog don't mess with them then they won't be affected.

Frogs - you'll hear them at night but I find you don't see them often. If you have alot of plants around the home and ones that keep water (big leaves) then frogs might hide out there. When it rains you might see them more readily. I had a cat get poisened by catching a frog, or that is what the vet believed it was.

As a kid we would catch tadpoles in plastic cups at school for fun. Never played with frogs though.

Some dogs chase iguanas and can catch them, consequently hurting them or killing them; so thats something to look out for. As for your daughter... iguanas usually take off when people get close.

--Islander

Islander: gongolos are actually millipedes. Centipedes are different.

Islander,Thanks for the info.

Right you are DL. Thanks.

Lora, what I was referring to as a Gongolo is the critter in the picture at:

You see them more often then centipedes; in fact I have rarely seen a centipede here, knock on wood 🙂 as they are the scarier of the two. Likewise I have rarely seen tarantulas and scorpions - but both exist. If your daughter is digging out in the dirt, lifting rocks, lifting old branches/leaves etc. she might come across some insects/bugs - as thats where I have most often seen them.

--Islander

Thanks Islander,you are an endless fountain of knowledge LOL.I appreciate you having patience with my endless greenhorn questions.Someday maybe I can do the same for people in my same position..... Thanks Again....Lora

We visited my sister and brother-in-law in St. Croix in late March. The second morning, I awoke to a tickling feeling on my shoulder, and opened my eyes to a lovely 6-inch centipede crawling along my shoulder towards my hair (a centipede caught in my hair...that would have been interesting...). I brushed it off onto the floor and my husband captured it in a glass so that we could confirm what it was. And it was the bad kind.:)

Anyway, I'm glad it didn't bite me. We moved the bed away from the wall and put the screens up on the windows and that was that. It has been a great story to tell. Since I've looked one in the eye and "survived", I'm not afraid of them...as much.

How poisonous are they??Do they just make you sick,or can they kill you???? Lora

The bigger the centipede, the worse the bite. From what I've heard, when you get bitten, the pain stays intense for like hours. You can also get fevers from it. It's not like there is an initial pain and it immediately goes down - it just continues being very painful for a long time. My impression is that it's the most pain you could have without being permanently damaged. I also heard that if you're the allergic type who would die from a bee sting, a centipede bite could kill you, but I'm not 100% sure if that's true. However, I haven't heard of anyone dying from one.