What has two eyes, no arms and up to 700 feet? It’s our first overseas visitor for the season, the Portuguese millipede.

Birds hate them because they taste foul. Even a brief encounter with them during eviction will often result in a nasty odour on fingers.

Whenever it rains, millipedes look for drier places to take shelter. In this part of Australia that means you’ll see plenty of them during Autumn and into Winter, often inside your home.

While they enjoy damp conditions – under leaves, mulch and plant pots, for instance – they don’t like to get wet. They’ll find their way under doors, and through any gaps you hadn’t noticed were there, appearing as if by magic on the carpet at your feet or halfway up a wall. And with all those feet they can cover quite a distance fairly quickly.

Unwanted since they were introduced in 1953, they sometimes reach plague proportions because they have no predators. That’s a real pity because, as herbivores, one of their favourite foods is young plants.

It’s raining here this morning – torrentially right now. It seems that contrary to expectation the Autumn break has well and truly arrived. A slight downside to that is that the house will be crawling with millipedes tonight.

If you’d like to read more about this critter who loves to make our home its home, click here.