[masraum]

Happy Belated Birthday!

My guess is that at least some of the "hair" on the caterpillar are urticating hairs which are basically the same as the hairs on a tarantula. I haven't read on it much, but I think they are like an extreme form of fiberglass. They are fine and get into your skin and irritate it. I assume they have something on them that turns the "irritating" volume up from what you get from fiber glass. I'd expect most places in the US to have them. Maybe not the desert and maybe less so in the places that get and stay really cold for a long time.

It could be worse, at least it wasn't what they call here an "asp" which is also a "puss moth caterpillar." They look like a cross between a caterpillar and cousin it. Apparently the sting from the hairs (and there are a bunch of them) can be pretty extreme.



Maybe you do have them, but hopefully not.

The southern flannel moth, Megalopyge opercularis (J. E. Smith) (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Zygaenoidea: Megalopygidae), is an attractive small moth that is best-known because of its larva, the puss caterpillar, which is one of the most venomous caterpillars in th

The southern flannel moth is found from New Jersey to Florida and west to Arkansas and Texas (Covell 2005). It is common in Florida but reaches its greatest abundance in Texas from Dallas southward in the western central part of the state (Bishopp 1923).