A Silverfish Living Near My Bathroom.

So a few weekends ago I was brushing my teeth in my bathroom, and I see this small shadow come out from behind the back of the bottom of the vanity and move quickly but yet at a subdued rate past the radiator and to the space below where the end of the tub abuts the wall.

I look down, and it’s a very large silverfish, maybe about 3 inches long.

Before I can do anything, it’s in the space behind the end of the bathtub, so I finish brushing my teeth, and then go get my little handbroom that I got from my (Hungarian) grandparents’ basement when I first moved to the city and that I use to sweep up around my place, and I start poking around behind the tub, to see if it scurried out, so I could kill it.

It never came, which made me wonder if there’s a further space all around the bathtub between the bathtub and the wall, where the silverfish live.

A few nights later, though, when I returned from a night of barhopping after teaching at the art school, I flipped on the light in my entryway, only to have a large silverfish start walking out from the door to the restroom and then turn to make a break for underneath the hallway closet door.

I flipped the light off, and in the refracted light from the streetlamps through the windows in my living room, I could see the silverfish pause in disorientation, and so I took my house sandal in hand and quickly flipped on the lights again and whacked it, a huge  1/2-inch chunk of its torso flying over a bit to the left after impact, some of its crumpled legs randomly quivering herky-jerky in the air.

That silverfish was also about 3 inches long, which makes me wonder if it was the same one I had seen before, and it had taken up residence in my bathroom.

I kind of feel bad now, because before silverfish were just silverfish, and now they have personalities and habits, but I still kill them.