Beautiful….but Deadly!
Well…you learn something new everyday! That was the case for my husband and I the other day. We were out in the yard picking up one of my house plants that had fallen from it’s hanging place. It was a beautiful Pothos Ivy.
During the summer months I take my house plants outside. They seem to really flourish out there. As with most house plants they can’t tolerate direct sunlight so I found a place in the shade for them.
After rescuing the plant and hanging it back up, we were checking it out to see if there was any damage. My husband brushed back on some of it’s leaves and all of a sudden he hollered, “Damn, what the heck was that?” I asked him what and all he could do was curse and hold his hand with the other hand.
I was really concerned as he seemed to be in great pain. I asked him what it was and he didn’t know. I was looking at the plant and noticed something hanging out of the underside of one of the leaves. I turned the leaf over and discovered the strangest looking caterpillar I had ever seen.
Neither of us had ever seen one that looked like this one did. Bob continued to express his feelings about the stinging and I was getting concerned about it. I had never known of there being such a thing as a stinging caterpillar, but something had happened and the only thing that was abnormal was the presence of this critter.
We came inside and immediately wet some tobacco and made a paste to apply to the sting. Bob said the pain continued to increase and was now shooting up his arm. We wrapped his finger in the tobacco paste to allow the tobacco to pull the venom out. Bob told me the sting was like getting hit at the same time and in the same place from a Red Wasp, Scorpion, and a Bumble Bee. I can only imagine.
I went back outside and captured the critter just in case we needed it for identification. We weren’t sure how serious this sting was. Bob decided to look it up on the net and found out all about this nasty little bug. What he found is called a Saddleback Caterpillar (Sibine Stimulea). I’m going to post some pictures we found of it so that anyone can see. If you see one, please, don’t touch it or you will wind up with a very nasty sting!
Oh, and by the way the tobacco paste works great on all kinds of stings. It will draw the poison out and help reduce swelling and pain. Just wanted to add that for those of you that didn’t know.
A brown and green one(the kind that stung Bob)
Another view of a brown and green
An orange and green one
The moth (this is a female)
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