E.W.C. - my experience...

One time when I was a kid, I and a couple of other kids had gone swimming down at the creek. Well we saw this white fuzzy catepillar floating down and we got to splashing it over to each other. Next thing I know this fuzzy worm is caught under my armpit and starts stinging me. Later that day, I was a 10 year old boy with a boob hanging under my armpit. It only stayed there about 1 day and finally went down.

To look at me now you would think two of them stung me on the chest!

Up here they are green and called tree caterpillars. They are supposed to sting, but none of us get it. Only thing not white in this homogenous state.
I have some that look like that on my red stemmed dogwood, they just about eat it up every year.

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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

You want for me to ship ya some white uns??? Guaranteed to sting and cause itchiness and swelling!

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Gotta go make a bracket to hold a golf umbrella over the seat of my tractor.
That should look "real ________ good "

I itch enough allready...........don't need them critters.

we just get tent caterpillars or bagworms as some call them, which are black with a stripe. never got bit by one, but boy do they make a mess!

Green ones are quite possibly tent caterpillars. Totally different. Tent caterpillars make their webs in a crotch of a tree. Fall web worms make them on the ends of the branches! Neither hurt anything.

I got one of those white ones down the back of my shirt last fall.

It did not feel good. At all.

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Respect The Cactus!

Yes, the dreaded ASP. When we have an invasion of them, they don't let the elementary children out on the playground. BAD bugs.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Well since your bringing race into this already... ;-) Down here in Texas
its the black ones (or EBC) that sting the worst! I was stung when I was
a kid (causing me to jump off the roof of the house I was playing on) and
ever since I keep a sharp eye out for them.

james

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"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people..."
Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837

Not so good. YOU are being un-PC, bashing the black caterpillars. Its okay to bash the white ones. Sheesh.

I had some of them White Caterpillars living over the far west side hill at the back edge of my property. As far as I knew they never bothered anybody..until one day some Blue Caterpillars decided to take up residence on the near east side of the hill at the back edge of my property. I didn't think anything of it until one day I heard a terrible commotion...and when I went to see what was going on.....what did I notice but many hundreds of them White Caterpillars were bashing those Blue Caterpillars silly with aluminum baseball bats. Ewwwww, what a mess.
Well, I couldn't stand the sight of all that Blue Caterpillar puss oozing down the near east side of the hill at the back edge of my property...so as quickly as I could I gathered up all my monkey wrenches and my crow bars and my tire irons..and I started handing them out to those Blue Caterpillars so they'd have a fighting chance.

That did the trick as them aggressive White Caterpillars retreated as quickly as a half-dozen Red Necks can empty a six-pack of Milwaukee's Best...and since those Blue Caterpillars are passive by nature....they did not take up pursuit to chase them White Caterpillars any farther.

I thought I'd done a good thing, but now I'm not so sure. The past couple weeks I've noticed that increasing numbers of White and Blue stripped caterpillars have been circling my house..and with each pass..they seem to be getting closer and closer and closer to my home's foundation..and this concerns me because they been eating everything in their path...including my several varieties of Hostas, my rose bushes, my picket fence...my cement bird bath .....


.....and right now I have to run and go see what that munching sound is in back room pantry.....

Got stung once by what some call a puss caterpillar, but in Texas we call an Asp.

It was on an outdoor faucet, and I reached down to turn the water on. Got me smack dab in the middle of my palm.

The pain was incredible for something that stings, it made my whole arm ache up to my shoulder.

I went to the emergency room, and was given a shot of epinephrine. Which made me all shaky and light headed - lol!

I had a double row of little purple spots where the spines got me.

Worst insect sting I've ever had, and not something anyone would want to repeat.

still itching... ugh.

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