Out Loud

Some bugs are easy to identify such as the Saddleback Caterpillar and Cow Killer Wasp, others are more difficult to identify such as this fuzzy white caterpillar. All four photos are of the same caterpillar from different angles and against different backgrounds.

There are quite a few different fuzzy white caterpillars and if you do a Google search you’ll discover that not only are there several very similar caterpillars, but that different websites will give you different identifications for the exact same species.

How does this happen? Not all websites are scientific. Some are hosted by entomologists (bug specialists), others are hosted by photographers, while others are blogs by folks who found an interesting bug that they want to talk about (like me).

Where it gets tricky is in how someone like me identifies a bug to blog about. In my research I found dozens of non-scientific websites posting a scientific name for this hairy white caterpillar. Most of them probably did a Google image search and took the info from the first photo they found that appeared to match even if that website was just another personal blog or photo sharing site.

I’m a bit more particular about where I get my identifications from. First, I try to find the bug on websites that are dedicated to insect identification or entomology sites. Then I try to find it on educational websites and other websites that are on my research list. My goal is to find the bug identified by multiple trusted websites, not just one.

If it’s hard to identify as this particular caterpillar was, I also look for regional information. In other words if one species is only found in California and I am on the East Coast, mine is obviously not that species.

This hairy white caterpillar came up with two different identifications and I spent hours trying to make sure I used the right one. The first identification that came up was for Spilosoma virginica. Hours on the web shot it down. I just didn’t find credible sources to back it up. The Spilosoma virginica is a fuzzy white caterpillar but it has spiky hair which is straight and it doesn’t have the black tufts.

There were so many furry white caterpillars. Some had prominent black spots, some had black heads, and most had straight hair.

My hairy white caterpillar turned out to be Apatelodes torrefacta, the larva of the Spotted Apatelodes Moth. There are several identifying features. Its hair lays down instead of sticking up. The black spots are barely noticeable. It has two black antennae or tufts on one end and a single one on the opposite end. There is no prominent face and you cannot see its feet. Finally, there are tiny black hairs along its back; you can barely see them.

It is similar to the Acronicta americana except that the Acronicta americana caterpillar has shorter, spikier hair, too many long black tufts and is missing the two black tufts at one end. Another fuzzy white caterpillar is the Lophocampa caryae, except that it has very prominent black spots. Yet another is the Megalopyge crispata which has the long droopy hair but no black tufts. The hair on this last one is actually too long to match my caterpillar. These were just a few of the possibilities that came up.

The moral of the story is that if you are trying to identify a bug, be very careful in which websites you trust for information. Anyone can post a photo and slap a name on it and personal sites may not take the time to properly research their posts.

A few other interesting facts about my caterpillar — the Apatelodes torrefacta — are that it can be bright white, off white or pale yellow. The tufts of the yellow variety are a brownish orange color. The view from underneath is really stunning except that I cannot verify this with my caterpillar as I did not flip him over to see. One photo that someone else took shows a yellowish body, with big black spots and neon orange feet. I would have loved to see it!

Another point of interest for the Apatelodes torrefacta is that it can have up to five broods in a year at 30-day intervals spanning an entire summer. Note that some sites specified only two broods. Five broods came from a posted PDF file that took its info from a book on North American Moths and another book specifically about this species of caterpillar. That sounded pretty official to me.

The Apatelodes torrefacta caterpillar is found from Ontario, Canada down to Florida and west to Texas and in parts of the Midwest. It prefers maple trees, oak trees, ash trees, and fruit trees such as plums, cherries, apricots, peaches and almonds.

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I was one of those girls that everyone thought would end up as an old maid owning 30 cats. I always had a cat and no matter where I went my cats went with me.

I didn’t ditch the cats to move someplace that didn’t allow them. I simply found a place that welcomed them. I didn’t ditch the cats because I was dating someone who didn’t like cats. I tried to date men who either liked or at the least accepted the cats. I did not believe in getting rid of a pet once you’d adopted one. Adoption is for life.

I was in my mid-thirties when my reign of cats ended. The 17 year old died of old age and the 11 year old caught a strange cat disease. I’d brought a new cat home thinking to adopt it but the cat was ill and I took him back to his owner the next day. Apparently the illness was very contagious and the next thing I knew, my beloved cat Hadji became ill. He had contracted FIP – feline infectious peritonitis.

My cat who never went outdoors and never came in contact with other cats got sick from one single exposure to one cat. The vet told me that no vaccine would have prevented it and that there was no cure. He also told me that Hadji would die from it and a few months later he did. His lungs filled with fluid and he had difficulty breathing and long story short, try as they might to clear the fluid they had to put him to sleep. It was one of my worst days and I held him in my arms as they ended his life.

The vet told me not to adopt another cat for at least six months. He said that my home would be contaminated with the disease and not to bring another cat into it. For the first time in decades, I was catless.

Six months passed and I still wasn’t comfortable to risk bringing a new cat into my home so I waited. In the meantime someone attempted to break into my house. They failed to get in but there was no doubt they had tried. There had been several burglaries in the neighborhood and when I became the target, that was it for me. I lived alone and I didn’t like being a sitting duck so that week I went from being a cat lady to a dog person.

I went to the dog pound and adopted Gypsy Rose, a year and a half old german shepherd mix who spent the rest of her life as my companion and watchdog. She lived a long life with me, never ailing for much until she reached old age.

With that one unexpected encounter with a very bad cat disease and burglar, I embraced life with dogs as completely as I’d always embraced life with cats, going on to write books about my experiences with dogs. Today I have both a husband and a dog, Dakota. Her old family got rid of her for many reasons, one of which was that they claimed she tried to eat their cat. How’s that for a strange ending?

I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 when I encountered the black cat. We didn’t have a cat at the time but I was a cat lover. I think I was born a cat lover and we’d had several cats come and go.

I was in the living room when I saw a black cat going up the stairs. I figured it must have gotten in when someone opened the door and I followed it.

The stairs went up to a landing, turned a corner and then went to the second floor where the bedrooms were. I followed the cat all the way up the stairs and into my bedroom. I immediately closed the door behind me so he couldn’t get back out again.

I was lucky as a child to have a bedroom and adjoining playroom. There was no door in between, just a doorway where double doors had once been. There was no way out of the bedroom or playroom except through the door I had closed.

I went looking for the cat. There weren’t many places he could hide and I searched them all: under the bed, in the closet, behind the dresser, under the dresser, everywhere. I looked high and lo but I could not find a cat. There was no cat in my room.

The only explanation was that I’d seen the ghost of a cat. He looked real to me, as real as any living cat could look. I didn’t even question it when I first saw him. I just assumed a cat had somehow wandered into the house so I went after him to put him back outdoors.

It wasn’t the only time in my life where the spirit of a cat had come to me. Decades later I had another encounter with a cat’s ghost. It convinced me that our pets do have spirits that live on after death and that they can actually send us messages, especially when the bond of love was strong in life.

If you’ve ever wondered whether pets have spirits and souls that live on after their body’s die, this is the story of Sunshine and her visitation of me from the beyond.

Sunshine was seventeen when she died. She’d been my companion since she was a kitten. From the time I was 19 to the time I was 36, Sunshine had been with me everywhere I went.

At the age of seventeen, she died peacefully in her sleep at home and I buried her in the backyard, piling the grave with stones so that no other animal would attempt to dig it up.

The next morning I woke up at dawn. I’m not a morning person and I rarely wake before 8 or 9 but for some reason I was wide awake at sunrise and I saw the strangest thing out the back window. On top of Sunshine’s grave was a cat. I’d never seen the cat before and it was lying on top of the pile of rocks which couldn’t possibly have been comfortable, but there it was.

I never saw the cat before and I never saw it again. I do not know what it meant except that it was strange for the cat to visit her grave shortly after her burial. That wasn’t the ghostly part, though.

A few days later I was sitting on the sofa reading a book. I become totally engrossed in the story when I read. I am no longer here and now, I am in the world of the book. I was not thinking about Sunshine at that moment. I think I was reading Terry Brooks.

I heard a loud purring behind me. My cats always slept on the sofa cushions behind my head and I still had a cat, an eleven year old named Hadji. I reached behind my head to pet him but he wasn’t there. I turned around and looked, but no Hadji.

That was odd. I’d heard a cat purring clear as day. I got up and looked around the room for him. No cat. I searched the whole house and found him sound asleep on the bed. He was totally zonked. There was no way he’d been up behind my head purring.

I believe that Sunshine was sending me a message that she was okay. It did not happen again, hearing purring where there wasn’t a cat. She had sent her message and she knew I’d gotten it.

Just before she died I had told her that it was okay to let go, that I’d be okay. I told her there were green valleys and birds and bugs and butterflies and that she should go there. I told her she be happy there and that she would feel young again.

When her spirit came to tell me goodbye I knew that she had found her happy place and that she’d gone to chase the butterflies.

For those of you who don’t want the full book Bad Dog to Best Friend, we’ve excerpted the three chapters that will help you train your dog to be home alone, and released them as a Kindle booklet called “Training Your Dog to be Home Alone.”

Chapters include:

Potty Training a Problem Dog
Dealing With Dog Chewing Problems
Training Your Dog to be Home Alone

The booklet Training Your Dog to be Home Alone is available on Amazon Kindle for $1.99.

Bad Dog to Best Friend now available on Kindle.  It’s more than a dog training book, it’s the story of one dog’s amazing journey from being a dog that nobody wanted to being a cherished family member.

Bad Dog to Best Friend book on Kindle

Too many dogs end up at the dog pound for dog problems and we’re hoping that Dakota’s story can teach people how to fix their dogs instead of abandoning them.  Keep the bad dogs out of the dog pound.  Instead, transform them into Man’s Best Friend as they were meant to be!

Her story is now available from Amazon.com in paperback with step-by-step dog training tips on how we transformed her.

Bad Dog to Best Friend paperback book

26 chapters include potty training, dog chewing and training your dog to be home alone.

Adopting a Used Dog is Easy – Keeping Him is The Hard Part
“Bad Dog to Best Friend” available in paperback or Kindle

Atlanta, GA
July 28, 2010

They adopted a used dog expecting fun and games but what they got was bad behavior, frustration and destruction.  He chewed, he peed, he nipped, he barked, and he made their life miserable.

Used dogs, also known as pre-owned, rescue or shelter dogs, come with a lot of baggage and you can’t assume they’ll be model citizens just because you rescue them from a life of revolving doors.  Imagine a street-wise teenager bounced from foster home to foster home, becoming the Master of Dirty Tricks along the way.  All you end up with is “Don’t Kill the Dog!” sticky notes.

Instead of abandoning him to what will probably be his death at the dog pound, bone up on a few tricks of the trade in dealing with dog problems.  From bad dog to best friend, Dakota’s story is a must for anyone with a problem dog.   She left a trail of mischief and mayhem in her path with chewing, barking, escaping, pottying and she had teeth like a shark.  From this rude beginning she was transformed into a dog who could be trusted with full run of the house all day.

“Bad Dog to Best Friend” is full of dog training tips and advice and gives step-by-step methods for potty training your dog, weaning your dog from a crate, teaching your dog not to chew, and you’ll get the inside scoop on why your dog doesn’t listen to you.  Learn about the Boss Dog syndrome and common mistakes dog owners make. All it takes to have a good dog is to be a good teacher.

Available on Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle.

Paperback URL:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453683178

Kindle URL:
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Dog-Best-Friend-ebook/dp/B003X95NM0

About the author:

Sharon Delarose has been writing both fiction and non-fiction for over two decades and has been published in magazines, books, newspapers, newsletters and online publications including Wikipedia.

Contact info:

Author:  Sharon Delarose
Website:  http://www.gityasome.com/blog/books

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About Gityasome Books:

Gityasome offers paperback and Kindle books on dog training, as well as t-shirts and gift items on a variety of topics.

It simply amazes me how many southern bugs are nasty. Bugs in the South are bigger and they all seem to either bite or sting and it’s never just a little pinch. Our one acre had produced scorpions, assassin bugs, saddleback caterpillars, black widows, and cow killers.

When you live in the South, bugs just go with the territory and if you don’t bother them, they generally won’t bother you. None of the really nasty bugs had ever actually bitten or stung us and after awhile you start losing the fear.

One night I woke up in the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom and when the bathroom light spilled into the bedroom, I saw what looked like a very big bug on the ceiling. I couldn’t tell what it was but I was concerned that it might be a scorpion. I’d heard many stories of scorpions falling from the ceiling onto people’s beds while they slept so my heebie jeebie alarm went into high gear.

We turned on the light for a better look and even then we were not a hundred percent certain. It was either a scorpion or a centipede and possibly a second bug next to it. Southern centipedes are scary creatures. They have extremely long legs and they move at lightening speed but as far as I knew, they were harmless to humans.

There was no doubt that we needed to get the bug off the ceiling but we argued back and forth as to who was going to do which part of the dirty deed. We needed a swatter to knock it off the ceiling and a killer once it fell and we both wanted to be the swatter. In the end, Bear drew both short straws and I stood back watching from afar.

The bug was maybe three feet over from the bed so it was pretty safe to knock it down. He swatted at it with a t-shirt and it started running across the ceiling toward the bed. It was definitely a centipede and it was directly over the bed when he threw the t-shirt at it in frustration over being pulled out of a sound sleep. This time he hit a bullseye and the centipede fell onto the bed, unharmed, and ran down behind the pillows.

We have a waterbed and as far as I could tell, it ran down into the crack between the mattress and the frame so now it appeared that the centipede was in our bed. We searched high and low but the centipede wasn’t coming out of his hidey hole.

I’d always believed that they were harmless to humans but I needed to convince Bear so I looked it up on the internet and what I found pretty much guaranteed that neither of us would sleep any more that night.

Our centipede was a Scutigera coleoptrata, commonly known as a house centipede. While the term “centipede” would give the idea that he had 100 legs they actually have about 15 pairs totaling 30 legs. House centipedes grow up to an inch and a half long but their legs make them appear much larger.

On the plus side, the house centipede is a predator whose prey includes bad bugs such as silverfish, cockroaches, carpet beetle larva, bedbugs, ants, flies, wasps, moths, crickets, earwigs, firebrats and spiders. They are considered beneficial insects for doing their utmost best to rid your home of these bad bugs.

On the minus side, the presence of house centipedes usually means that you have a problem with one or more of the bad bugs. In addition, house centipedes are venomous. The front legs are actually “modified legs” which can sting and these centipedes can also bite.

House centipedes are amazingly fast and can reach speeds of up to one mile an hour. Their speed allows them to outrun other bugs, pounce on and then lasso their prey with their long legs. They can then inject the venom.

Their legs are so agile that they can catch and hold more than one bug at a time. If they themselves become prey, they have the ability to detach their legs in order to escape. House centipedes will even feed on wasps, moving in to inject their venom and then darting off at lightening speed to wait for the venom to take effect, staying at a safe distance so they themselves don’t get stung.

Outdoors they live under rocks, in woodpiles, crawlspaces, compost and other damp locations. Indoors they can be anywhere though they prefer basements and bathrooms. Scutigera coleoptrata can live their entire lives indoors and can live up to seven years in a hospitable environment.

In spite of their ability to bite and sting, house centipedes are generally considered harmless to humans as more often than not their jaws cannot penetrate human skin. Only a very large adult can actually inflict a bite. However, there are exceptions and the bite or sting is described as being similar to a bee sting with localized pain and mild to severe swelling. Most stings happen when people either handle them or step on them.

I felt bad for the times we had told our dog to “go get the bug.” She did play with the house centipedes briefly but after the first couple of times she wanted no part of them. I’m guessing she met with a bite or sting. While it would have been painful it poses no serious danger to cats and dogs, no more than a bee sting would.

I believe there’s a lesson to be learned. Trust your dog. If a dog doesn’t want to mess with a particular bug you shouldn’t be messing with it either.

If it wasn’t for our dog Dakota we wouldn’t know about half of the creatures we share our one acre with. She’d led us to Eastern Kingsnakes, Minotaur Dung Beetles and a variety of other interesting creatures and plants. This time it was a turtle in our strawberry patch.

Our dog went out for potty and when I called she didn’t come. I looked out the window and saw her in the strawberries with her nose to the ground. Irritated, I went to get her. Something had been eating the strawberries and we suspected our dog but we’d never caught her in the act.

I fully expected to catch Dakota red-handed eating our strawberries but when I got down to the strawberry patch she wasn’t eating, she was pawing at something. Her level of intensity made me think it was a toad. Our dog was a toad chaser and had given us quite a scare one night when she ate a big toad.

This time, however, she wasn’t after a toad, she was after a large high-domed turtle. I softened a bit when I saw what had caused her to ignore my calls. How could I possibly compete with a big turtle? I picked up the turtle and moved it out of the strawberry patch and took Dakota into the house. The turtle didn’t get set loose until I had taken nearly 40 photos of it.

I kept wondering about finding the turtle in the strawberries. Do turtles eat strawberries? Did Dakota solve the mystery of our strawberry thief? I researched our turtle and identified it as an Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina).

Eastern Box Turtles are land turtles that can live up to 50 years and some claim much longer. They are found from the East Coast to Texas and Oklahoma, north to Michigan and Massachusetts, and south to Florida. They don’t generally go into the water unless it’s shallow and are usually found in wooded areas, swamps and fields. We had wooded areas on either side of our backyard.

Eastern Box Turtles hibernate in the winter burying themselves up to two feet underground. I remembered finding a turtle buried underground in the woods a couple years earlier. I was digging a hole to plant something and the shovel hit a rock. I dug the rock out to discover it wasn’t a rock at all, but a big turtle. Thankfully the shovel hadn’t harmed him and I set him on his way. I was surprised to find a live turtle buried so deep in the ground.

The most important thing I learned was that yes, turtles eat strawberries. Eastern Box Turtles eat a variety of fruits, berries and vegetables. They also eat bugs, worms, snails, grubs, caterpillars, crickets, beetles, grass, flowers, mushrooms (even toxic ones), and they will feed on dead animals if they happen across one.

Dakota was a semi-adult shelter dog who was the Queen of Bad Behavior and the Master of Dirty Tricks. Bad Dog to Best Friend takes you from Dakota’s awful beginnings to her amazing transformation.

Bad Dog to Best Friend: The Book The Transformation of Dakota Available in Paperback & Kindle