Millipede Invasion!!
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At a visitor centre on the south coast of New Zealand’s capital, the blustery, briny wind is no match for the smell of thousands of decaying millipedes, which reek like decomposing vermin and rotting fish.
Along the streets of Wellington’s Ōwhiro Bay, dead curled up millipedes are piled up on the footpath, as live ones march along the street. One resident says her neighbours collected five rubbish bags worth of the creatures in a week from around their home.
“You’re constantly on guard. These things are everywhere,” Georgia Osborne says. “There have been times I’ve woken up with a millipede on my face.”
The infestation of Portuguese millipedes in the southern suburbs of Wellington has now become so bad that people are likening it to a “horror movie”, as they are forced to sweep away hundreds of the putrid-smelling critters from their homes and gardens each day.
