ZEPHYRHILLS, Fla. -- A Land O’ Lakes mom is warning others after her son was pricked by a venomous caterpillar. Her Facebook post about the experience has been shared more than 350,000 times.
Logan Pergola was doing volunteer landscaping work in rural Zephyrhills when he felt the sharp pain. He had no idea what was lurking in these trees.
“All of a sudden, my hand went numb, and it sort of just burned a lot.”
The pictures of the marks don't capture how painful it was. Pergola said it felt like someone took a power drill to his arm. He didn’t find out until later that the culprit was a tiny, furry caterpillar called an asp.
“I knew it wasn't good as soon as I saw it, but definitely never thought it would be as bad as it was,” he explained.
Pergola's mom bagged up the caterpillar and rushed him, and it, to the ER.
“We drove in and we took the caterpillar and we showed them,” Andrea Pergola said. “The nurses up front didn't know what it was, but when the doctor came in the room, he knew right away.”
After a few hours connected to an IV with a mix of painkillers and allergy medication, Pergola recovered.
“I'm a native Floridian, and we camp and we know all the little bugs, and I was a Girl Scout and never seen or heard of one,” his mom said.
The University of Florida says the asp caterpillar, also known as the puss caterpillar, is the first stage in the life cycle of the Southern flannel moth. Its sting "produces an immediate intense burning pain followed (by) the appearance of a red grid-like pattern on the skin that matches the pattern of the venomous spines on the caterpillar."
The college says sting victims may suffer from symptoms "including headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia, low blood pressure, seizures and more rarely, abdominal pain, muscle spasms and convulsions."
Next time they're outside, the Pergolas said they'll keep an eye out for the little critter that can cause a lot of pain.
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