Jump!

In general I enjoy "jump scenes" - sudden hair-raising surprises - even less in real life than I do in suspenseful movies. Which is to say: not at all. Or, as the kids on the celebrity blogs write when confronted with a closeup of Angelina Jolie's scrawny, veiny arms, Do not want. It took me years to recover from certain scream-worthy moments in movies like Wait Until Dark, Carrie, and Deliverance.

Yesterday morning I turned on the shower in the downstairs bath and thought, "Hmmm, Melinda didn't clean her hair out of the drain." I reached down to grab the dark clump of swirling stuff and nearly fractured my skull on the shower-curtain rod when my nearsighted eyes registered that the object writhing just inches from my fingertips was a centipede as big as a goddamned mouse.(And let me just say I would have far preferred a cute little rodent.) He was so big, when I managed to capture him with a wad of toilet paper, he crunched. Multiple times. His long, hairlike legs were still waving as I flushed him down the toilet.

Early today I was walking Daisy a few blocks from home when an object plummeted from the sky so close to my head, I felt a draft. It landed on the asphalt at my feet with an audible thump. Eeek!

This latest jump scene, however, ended comically. A young freckled starling swooped down to reclaim the large french fry that had slipped from his beak in mid-flight. He wobbled off with it, pausing every few steps to secure a better grip, then set to feasting on his prize before it could escape again.

What memorable jump scenes have you experienced? Cinematic or real.