My neighbor is leaving town for a week of vacation.
He brought a wheelbarrow with his outdoor plants over so we could water and tend to them.
I reached toward one of the plants and the underside of my forearm brushed up against something sharp. I thought maybe I got stung by a bee but when I looked more closely I saw a green caterpillar with nasty looking horns on both ends.
After a minute or two, my arm starts to feel like there’s liquid fire underneath and then starts to redden up. I told my neighbor I had to go inside. I washed the area thoroughly with soap and water and went online to find the culprit.
It looks like it’s nothing too serious and can be treated like a bee sting. In the mean time, I’ve got a red welt on my forearm that still stings like hell.
Little bastard.
Anyone else have any encounters with these vile little beasts?
Wow, what a cool-looking bug in all its stages, but sounds awful, so thanks for the heads up!
Thanks gonzomax for the link that says these are Eastern North America’s problem, hopefully they’ll never make it this far west. We just have scorpions in our garden, but we toss them (gloved hands) to the chickens and that takes care of that, so far.
Urticarial hairs/spines. Little venomous spines all over the body that when grasped pierce the skin and inject a venom. Think of it like the stinging nettle of the animal world.
My personal favorite is the Puss Caterpillar, both for the charming moniker and the “cute” appearance of both caterpillar and adult.
Oh yes…Evil wee beasties! A friend of mine got stung by one on his hand, and it was extremely swollen for nearly a day. NASTY little creatures. They are really cool to look at though!
I had an encounter with a Puss caterpillar (we called it an asp) when I was a child. It fell out of a tree and landed on my forearm.
I remember the double row of red dots and the PAIN (from one of the websites: “immediate onset of excruciating, unrelenting pain, radiating to the lymph nodes in the armpit, and then to the chest. Though only rarely representing a true medical emergency, these symptoms have the feel of a genuine, serious, life-threatening event.”)
My mother chastised me for complaining so loudly and so long about how much it hurt. Wow, talk about reliving a childhood trauma!
I hope your arm feels better today.
Damn, I hate those things. I’ve been stung three times in my life by them, and each time the reaction has been worse. Last time was about twenty years ago, and it pretty much knocked me out of usefulness for the rest of the afternoon (I was working on a farm picking blackberries for the next day’s market).
