Last night my fiancee and i had a very rude awakening. I woke up with a severe excruciating pain on my left shoulder. As I've been stung many times by various critters, i knew it was a sting. I get up carefully, to go turn the light on and see what was in my bed and i hear my fiancee screaming. Oh no i thought. I turn the light on and i see a lime green cute little catapillar in our bed. My daughter loves butterflies and was wanting to raise one so two days previous when i found a few of these cute little critters on a tree i snagged them, and put them in a small aquarium. Well this one escaped and now we are traumatized... And the rest went out the door, with a few missing in the house... I've played with caterpillars my whole life from catalpa worms to inch worms and even the fuzzy black and red ones... All caterpillars were friendlies in my book, not anymore. It's called an IO Butterfly catarpillar, he's lime green to yellow with red and white stripes down his side. He has a very potent sting that comes from the cute little hairs on his back and it feels about double what a bull nettle does. First aid is, Get some scotch tape and dap it over the affected area to remove it's glass pipette like spines full of poison. then accompany with alcohol, ammonia, or i used Bactine to dull the pain. The pain generally only lasts a few hours, and isn't deadly, but if you got stung you would definitely freak out, it hurts, bad. below are pictures i took of the capatillars when i caught them, and pictures of mine and my fiancee's stings.
yeah a rude awakening at 3 am, i actually was letting this little critter crawl on my hand and petting it the day before, i had no reason to think it could "get me".
i think that is a moth caterpillar not a butterfly. where were they being kept tho that they made it all the way to your bed in the middle of the night. Also hope you found all of them that were loose before anyone else was stung.
They were in a 10 gallon tank with an old incandescent hood with plenty of greenery, about 4 escaped, through the hole for the filter i think... These caterpillars do make a moth that looks more like a butterfly and has eyes on its wings (i suddenly felt the urge to do reasearch after being bitten...) but are described as both moth and butterfly in different places. i was just sharing this so if someones kid brings one in, they can see it and know what to do, for some reason it let me play with it then changed his mind later. And this little bugger wmade the trek from my dinning room, through my livingroom, into the hall, and then all the way across my bedroom. It really surprised me how far he went, i also assumed they weren't nocturnal and preferred greenery to human warmth...
