This morning right after waking up, I stumble downstairs, wife's milling about the kitchen, "oh, hey, you're up."

(small talk, how did you sleep, etc)

"Oh, I wanted to ask you. What is that?" *points at wall by back door*

I'm still groggy from my mini-hibernation, so I bend over to take a look. "Oh, I think I've read about these. You didn't touch it, did you?"

"Oh @#$& no."

I grabbed a card-stock junkmail out of the mail basket and a rocks glass from the cabinet and carefully extracted this thing from the wall (without touching it) and then dumped it onto the paper towel for photo shoot.



URL here confirmed my suspicion: https://www.southernliving.com/garden/pests/southern-flannel-moth-caterpillar

First time I saw one of these, having been in Texas for 22.5yrs. We didn't have these in NE Oklahoma or SE Kansas.

Shee-ite! And it looks so harmless and cuddly.

I was stung by a wasp last week, but it was through my jersey shorts and I thought it was a mosquito bite until a few hours later, when the spot had swollen to near grapefruit size on my thigh.

Good instincts man. Stay safe!

Gary

...

Rob,

I have never seen one of these before.

Your "Loc: Texas!" is pretty vague and I understand why that may be. Are you within 150-200 miles of DFW?

This bug scares the hell out of me with my reaction to insect stings.

Please advise.

Windsor,
Holy Cow!!!! You would never think that something that size could cause so much trouble.

You used good judgement in not touching it.

I presume in Texas,it is common to dump out your shoe/boots before putting them on ???

Wayne

Crap, I have never seen nor heard of that thing. Thanks for the posting.
Walker

Those damn thangs are BAD!!!!!

I'm currently(*) in Allen, between McKinney and Plano.

The locals call them "Asp", which I found out after posting it on BookOfFaces.

* - I'm moving to a rural community west of Van Alstyne very soon. We're scheduled to close on the house this coming Wednesday.

I read about them sometime ago, made mental note of "don't touch little things that look like little hairpieces."

I learned the valuable *bonk* *bonk* *shake* *shake* with my boots in Kansas. A period when I was in college, I lived in a farm house that was infested with scorpions -- little tan-colored things that made your hand or foot feel like you stuck it in a campfire.