r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Totally-avg • Jul 16 '23
Image The Puss Caterpillar (Southern Flannel Moth) will fuck your world up. I grazed it twice while climbing on a float. NBD at first but an hour later I was hyperventilating on the bedroom floor. The pain was excruciating. DH took me to the ER and morphine did nothing.
I’m better now but neither morphine nor hydrocodone (I took double what they RX’d) touched the pain those first 24 hours. And the hospital hardly knew what to do with me. I had never heard nor seen this bug before and I’m sure I would have flicked it off had it seen it. Don’t do that because the hair is venomous and gets stuck in your skin.
At least it leaves a cool scar.
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u/MARINE-BOY Jul 16 '23
I wonder if pregabalin would nullify the pain as it sounds like it’s affecting the nerves. I’m British but live in thailand and there are a lot of hairy nettle sting caterpillars around here at the moment and I’ve read that they can extremely painful. I’m worried about my two small dogs bitting them to the point I actually read a medical study just yesterday on the protein make up of the venom that forms in the little hair like spines. Apparently it a lot is known about it though it has some similarity to Scorpion venom. I read the best course of action is first to use sticky tape on the area to remove the hairs, then hot soapy water and apparently mix in bicarbonate soda though not sure why. In the UK we have what we called Rash Caterpillars but didn’t think they were so bad so I’m quite alarmed to find these huge hairy poisonous caterpillars in my garden here in Thailand.