Urti-WHO now???

The following incident did not take place on the Link Trail, but rather a few miles away in Oneida. It is relevant to this journal because your child may encounter a cocoon from the same species of caterpillar on the trail.

Grace and I babysat Dylan and Abby for a few hours while their parents went out to celebrate their anniversary. While the kids played on the lawn I spent some time snapping pictures of spiders. In order to steady my hand, I grabbed a block of wood to prop up my arm. There happened to be a cocoon on this block of wood, and Dylan noticed it. The kids poked at it, which I though harmless enough. Little did I know what perils awaited our young charges. (CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Well before his parents got back, Dylan was complaining about discomfort in his hand. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but he asked me to take a picture of his thumb soon after he touched the cocoon. I had forgotten all about this until weeks later, when I was going through my pictures from that day. There was a series of shots of the hairs embedded in his thumb - hairs I didn't even know were there when I took the shots!

Grace took a close look and noticed tiny hairs sticking out of both of the children's fingers and palms. I was shocked. The only time I'd heard of something like this was when, visiting Arizona in 2003, I was warned about the hairs of the teddy bear cholla. But I had no idea that hairs from a soft-looking cocoon could get stuck in the skin! I remembered that the best way to remove teddy bear cholla hairs is to apply Elmer's glue or duct tape and then peel it off, so I went and found some tape.

Thankfully the hairs from the cocoon don't burn like those from the teddy bear cholla; they seemed to cause the kids considerable itching, but not what you'd call pain. So they were patient and relatively fidget-free while we pressed the tape onto their little piggies again and again. It took a long time, but eventually we got most if not all of them out.

I thought that was the end of it, but no such luck. Two days later I was back at the office and I got a call from my sister. Dylan's hand had gotten worse! The discomfort had increased, and there were little red bumps on his hand. I called Madison County Cooperative Extension and posted a request for expertise on the BugGuide forum. Then I did a whole lot of furious Googling.

Among other things, I found this thread on Arachnoboards.com, in which the general consensus was that no one quite knows whether the hairs cause irritation via purely mechanical means, or whether they contain a poison like the urushiol in poison ivy. I think that was where I first saw the term "urticating hairs". It seems that tarantulas and some caterpillars have them, and that the cocoons of those caterpillars retain the hairs!

I called my sister back, conveying to her the general sense I got from skimming a number of sources: an injection may not do anything, so don't let the doctor stick the kid unless he can show you a good reason to do so. The best thing to do in these cases is to apply a topical steroid, which is exactly what the doctor ended up prescribing.

I spoke to my sister a few days later, and Dylan's hand was fine. The strange thing was that Dylan suffered much more than Abby, despite the fact that she got more hairs in her hand than he did. This might be because Dylan had been exposed to something similar before. If you read the Arachnoboards.com thread, you'll learn that the poison in urticating hairs effects people like the urushiol in poison ivy: most folks show no reaction the first time they're exposed, a moderate reaction the second time, and so on.

The irritation comes at least in part from the mechanical properties of the hairs, but it seems likely that the allergic reaction comes from a poison. This morning, nearly a month later, I read an article* about a moth with poisoned urticating hairs that I printed out from JSTOR**. It seemed to show conclusively that, although the initial skin reaction is due to the hairs' mechanical properties, there is a separate allergic reaction caused by poison.

OOH OOH!! I just went to Google the article so that I could see if it was available outside JSTOR, and look what I found: "Investigative Studies of Skin Irritations From Caterpillars"***. Note that you can download the entire .pdf file!

...pauses to read the article...

Interesting! And by "interesting", I mean the fraction that was not so densely technical that I had no clue what the authors were going on about. Here's a summary of the germane bits.

In clinical practice, skin exposure has been usually accidental in the woods or in the forest. In the home, caterpillars or cocoons or moths may get into sheets, pillows, etc. and irritate the skin even after prolonged periods of drying of the arthropod. In one area of Texas, according to Bishopp (8), schools had to close until the larva were under control. Katzenellenbogen (22), has described caterpillar dermatitis as an occupational disease in plantation workers. Ziprkowski, Hofshi and Tahori (23) report 600 cases of caterpillar dermatitis among 3000 soldiers encamped in a pine grove. Occasionally the irritant material may be even dustborne. The airborne factor is more important in the development of the irritation from the hairs of moths. "Yellow tail moth dermatitis" is well known among merchant marine personnel who use ports of Central and South America (24, 25, 26). Also well known among the troops in Korea is the papular dermatitis from the "Yellow Korean Moth".

...

When setae were immersed in water, saline alcohol, etc., and dried out, although they were very brittle, the insertion of these into the skin did not produce any reactions. It was not possible on microscopic section to see a definite foreign body reaction around the inserted setae. Therefore,the seta itself produced no significant foreign body reactions. However, setae removed freshly from the caterpillar or left by the caterpillar were found to contain the irritant material. This is again additional proof for the basic idea that the setae, themselves, in spite of their barbed appearance serve merely as a tube to carry the irritant substance.

...

Although the caterpillar has been studied for some time, the exact nature of its irritant principle is still not known definitely. Its polypeptide nature is suspected; 5-hydroxytryptamine may be present. We, however, could not find this important material in our extracts. The poison glands of the caterpillar appear similar to the salivary glands of the other arthropods of dermatologic interest. The skin reactions vary according to the sensitivity of the individual. ...

So, in summary: lots of live or caterpillars or their cocoons or even their remains can cause skin reactions of varying severity. The immediate reactions may be caused to a greater or lesser degree by the mechanical properties of the urticating hairs, but the more serious, and the more long-term, reactions are due to a toxin of unknown nature. So don't go nuzzling any caterpillars.

*The Poison and Poison Apparatus of the White-Marked Tussock Moth Hemerocampa leucostigma Smith and Abbot
Paul M. Gilmer
The Journal of Parasitology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Dec., 1923), pp. 80-86

**Helping put Grace through the School of Physical Therapy at Columbia has its perks, foremost among which is that I get access, through her, to pretty much any research article I want. JSTOR, an online library of many research periodicals, is the best of the sources.

***Investigative Studies of Skin Irritations From Caterpillars
Leon Goldman, M.D., Faye Sawyer, Ann Levine, John Goldman, Steven Goldman and Joan Spinianger, B.S.
Presented at the Twentieth Annual Meeting of The Society for Investigative Dermatology, Inc., Atlantic City, N. J., June 7, 1959.

Look at the big spider!

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa Web album.

I had promised Dylan that I’d take him on a hike this weekend, so it was the highest-priority item on my list of things to do before I left town on Sunday. I had been wanting to fill in my trail maps with pictures from the Canastota end, but Dylan’s mom had said that he wanted to go to back the quarry. So I engaged in a bit of subversive redirection. I asked him if he remembered the bridge over the stream where we threw sticks in and watched them float downstream, and asked him if he wanted to go back there. Thankfully he was excited about that prospect.

Either Dylan remembered me rubbing alcohol on his legs after last summer’s hike through a section with lots of poison ivy, or his mother reminded him to avoid it, because on the trail through the woods near the cemetery he kept pointing to plants and asking me “Is that poison ivy?” I assured him that I’d tell him if I saw any.

After passing under the tree trunk growing horizontally over the trail near the cemetery, Dylan turned around and watched me make my way under it. Laughing, he pointed out how he didn't even have to duck his head. Oh, kid, it’s not lost on me. The years are flying by so fast that I fear you’ll double in size if I blink once, and lose all interest in what I have to share with you if I blink twice. So believe me, I’m savoring the moment.

Before reaching the path back to the old reservoir we saw the first white trillium of the day, and the first of several cute and colorful birdhouses that someone put up since last fall.


On the path we enjoyed seeing the violets that were popping up everywhere. I pointed out the massive poplars to the left of the trail and, when Dylan asked what the concrete structure was, told him that it used to be a reservoir. That, of course, led to the question “What’s a reservoir?” I love it when kids ask questions. As we mounted the staircase he asked about the notches in the log steps, so I explained about traction.


As soon as we reentered the woods I encountered an excellent photo opportunity: a beetle on a trout lily blossom. Unfortunately my holding still and snapping shots also represented an opportunity for insects to land on me and start sucking my blood.

We continued on through scads of mayapples and white, pink and black trillium. There were also a lot of what I think was false Solomon's seal, but I didn't think to get any shots of it.


I also started to notice a curious plant within the leaf litter: shiny pale stems that seemed to have sprouted from the earth and plunged right back in again. later, after I got home and talked to Grace about it, she indicated that these sprouts are quite common. They must be one of those things that I never noticed before, but I'm sure my eye will catch them from now on.

We descended the staircase amid a slope sprinkled liberally with trillium. As we walked along the path of 4x4s that skirt the stream, Dylan asked why the crosswise slats were there. As I got some more shots of trillium I explained again about the importance of traction on otherwise slippery wood.


Just as we reached the bridge, Dylan said “Look at the big spider” and I said “Where?!” He pointed, and there was a large brownish grey spider clinging to the Canastota Creek sign on the side of the bridge! While Dylan threw sticks into the stream I got a few hundred shots of this beautiful specimen*. See the “boxing gloves”? Those are pedipalps, and the fact that they’re swollen means that it’s a male. Believe it or not, they’re copulatory organs. Check this out.**


At some point while Dylan was playing around on the bridge and gathering sticks to throw in the water, he got a sliver in his finger. He was rather distressed but agreed to let me dig it out. I thought of my knife, but then remembered the teardrop corsage pins I'd put in my camera case as size reference for photographs. Their first use turned out to have nothing to do with photography. I poked and teased at the sliver as Dylan's distress intensified, manifesting itself as a high keening noise. I have to give him credit, though: he endured it with minimal squirming. Eventually I got it out, and the keening subsided.


We headed back through the ravine and up the stairs amid the blanket of gentle green sprinkled liberally with white and pink trillium blossoms. Dylan did a bit of tree-climbing while I snapped shots of violets.


The sun came out and I got some very satisfying shots of shiny young poison ivy. I showed Dylan how the leaves grow in clusters of three, and told him that the waxy shine comes from the oils that rub off on your skin and give you rashes and blisters. I believe I took the opportunity to drill into him the old mnemonic "leaves of three, let it be". I also reminded him that Virginia creeper is shiny but not poisonous, and that older poison ivy leaves are not very shiny but they are still poisonous. The point is that poison ivy is best identified by its clusters of three leaves.


One of the joys of macro photography is getting the pictures home and seeing things that you had no idea were there when you shot them. And in my experience, spider webs are number one in that category of retrospective joys. Those little suckers are spinning their webs everyhwere, and this is never more apparent than when I examine shots that I thought were just of plants and insects. Click on the photo above and look at the top. See the web leading down to the broadleaf toothwort next to the poison ivy?


Likewise, I never saw the webs strung between these two poison ivy plants (look on the left)...


... or the delicate strands on this garlic mustard plant.

*I looked up the spider later and found out that it belongs to the genus Dolomedes, also known as fishing spiders. I had no idea that fishing spiders were so widespread! I believe this one to be a Dolomedes scriptus.

**If you're really interested in the subject of spider mating, find a copy of the following article.

Studies on the Habits of Spiders, Particularly Those of the Mating Period
by Montgomery, T. H., Jr.
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. 55 (1903), pp. 59- 149
Published by: Academy of Natural Sciences

Ewwwwwwww!

I consider myself to be near the low end of the squeamishness spectrum. I grew up on a farm, and spent a few years in the nineties working in homes for developmentally disabled adults. Not only can I deal with the host of fluids that people and other creatures discharge, but in most cases I could do so with one hand while spooning Swiss Miss vanilla pudding into my mouth with the other. So when something makes me say "Ewwwwwwww!" it's noteworthy. Now you're probably thinking that this already sounds like a disgusting topic for a blog post, but I figure it's worth warning folks about the importance of adequately preparing one's feet for a very long hike. Hey, be thankful I'm not enough of a freak to include a photo.

My toenails had gotten longish by Saturday, and I suspected that was one of the main reasons for the pain in the big toe of my left foot after the hike. The farther the nail sticks out, the more of a moment arm it presents to any upward forces exerted on it, and that means more torque at the nail/cuticle boundary. I had made a mental note not only to cut my nails before I do any more hiking this weekend, but to always check their length - and, if necessary, trim them - before a hike.

So this morning I had a few minutes to spare, and I looked down and said "Hey, gotta trim those." I grabbed the clippers, grasped the toe in question, and started wondering again whether I might lose the nail. The pain had subsided since Saturday night, but it was still tender. There was a slight reddishness to the flesh beneath, like it was bruised. I began trimming. I nicked the cuticle and... there were fluids. No pain, just... fluids. Let's just leave it at that.

Again, this is not an self-indulgent exercise in being disgusting. Maybe this warning will keep you from losing a nail on a long hike. Or maybe you have much more experience than I, and can give me suggestions for preventing wear and tear on the toes. I didn't mind the full-body ache or the burning from the stinging nettles or the blisters, because I knew they'd fade in a few days. I'm going to lose at least part of this toenail, though, and that presents a more long-term inconvenience.

So, what can I do next time to treat my toes better? As I mentioned in the entry for that hike, I made the huge mistake of wearing only one pair of socks. Two or three pairs would have certainly mitigated the problem, but would they have solved it? I doubt it because I didn't have a problem with the big toe on my right foot. That means there's an asymmetry to my gait, because it stands to reason that my left foot is doing something that my right foot isn't. I need to correct that asymmetry if I'm to hike without damaging myself further. Luckily my fiancée, she gots th' mad physical therapy skillz, so she'll be able to set me straight - literally.

There and Back Again - Canastota to Cazenovia and Back!

This image comes from my Google Map of the fifteen miles of trail between Canastota and Cazenovia. I hiked back and forth along that red line yesterday. But first, a word about why I was foolish enough not to get a good night's sleep before a thirty mile hike.

A dear friend of mine who joined the Air Force in December arrived back home in Oneida on Friday. This was his first leave, so I made a point to be there for the homecoming. I drove from New Jersey after work, so I didn't reach Oneida until around 11:30. I sat and talked with my friend and his family until a suspicious illumination spread on the horizon. I checked the time. It was nearly 5:00 AM - which is when I had intended to get up for my hike. I drove home, got two hours of sleep, got up, filled the water pouch of my new backpack, threw a few other things into it, grabbed a takeout breakfast at the Knotty Pine, and hit the trail at 8:40 AM.

The first interesting thing I saw that made me wish I'd brought my camera was a small carcass I found near the trail. There was nothing left but the head and the rear skin, as though the predator had intended to make a muskrat skin rug. The strange thing, though, was the webwork of glistening strands¹ that covered the carcass and radiated outward onto the dirt for several inches. If my head was more easily turned by the horror movies I've seen recently I would have thought that a giant spider had spun a web over it before devouring it.

Focused on maintaining a brisk pace, I crossed Nelson Road at 9:19, Cottons Road at 9:35, and Quarry Road at 10:10. By then my legs were burning and red - presumably I'd walked through some stinging nettles and/or poison ivy. Note to self: wear long pants next time.

I reached Ingalls Corners Road at 10:33, the Freber/Hodge Road trailhead at 11:28, and Carrys Hill Road at 11:54. Before reaching Emhoff Road at 12:09 I had further cause to rue my decision not to burden myself with a camera: as I reached the fence just past the ravine with the staircase, I saw a doe and her small fawn a hundred yards to the west. The fawn was circling and nuzzling the mother, exploring its small world in a way that Samuel Pepys would surely have called "...the prettiest thing that ever I saw." I snapped away with my substandard phone camera, but even the best shots yielded little more than a blur. Oh, for that 12X zoom lens...


Between Bingley Road and Cazenovia I saw two peculiar insect mating rituals I'd never encountered before: the first pair, some species unkown to me², were "face-to-face" but only touching by the tips of their abdomens. Then I noticed a pair of bumblebees, facing away from each other on a leaf, but also touching the tips of their abdomens.

I reached Route 20 in Cazenovia at 1:06. I had worked up quite an appetite, and was wondering where I should eat. Like an answer to my prayers, I saw signs advertising the chicken barbecue at the Methodist church. I made a beeline - well, the line a bee who has to ask directions makes, at any rate - and chowed down on a half chicken, a roll, salt potatoes, baked beans with just about the right amount of too much brown sugar, a brownie, and a cup of tea. Thoroughly refreshed, I hit the trail again at 2:03.

I had arranged with my sister to take my four year old nephew on part of my hike, so she dropped him off on Emhoff. He made it all the way to the Hodge Road trailhead under his own steam, although by then I'd gotten quite irritable, and I feel a little bad about that. See, I was already exhausted, and having to walk very slowly made it much worse. Under normal circumstances I'd enjoy his desire to stop, ask questions about everything he sees, and poke at things with sticks. Nearly falling asleep on my feet, though, I was not quite the patient teacher I wish to be. Still, I controlled myself well enough to tell him a bit about erosion and railroads, and begin inculcating him with the names of flowers such as oxeye daisy, birdfoot trefoil, musk mallow, and cow vetch. The slow pace added about an hour to my overall time.

On Hodge Road while pointing out musk mallow to my nephew I saw yet another pair of insects - another species we hadn't seen before - mating abdomen-to-abdomen on a leaf. Of course I had to go and tell him that they were mating, and of course he asked "What's 'mating'?". I hemmed and hawed and wondered what I might tell him that his mother might approve of, and settled on "They get together and make babies." That seemed to satisfy him. Whew.

By the time my sister met us on Hodge Road I had already done some serious thinking about cutting the hike short; my feet were aching, my back was stiff, and my head was reeling from exhaustion. But still, when she offered to give me a ride, I said "No, I want to finish this on my own steam." Thus began the struggle between my stubborn desire to follow through with my plan of making the whole hike from Canastota to Cazenovia and back, and my desire to rest the blistering stumps at the ends of my legs.



On Seibenbaum Road I experienced the most bitter missed photo opportunity of all. I saw a flash of color in the tall grass at the roadside, walked over, and saw one of the most fantastic compositions I've ever witnessed. Lurking beneath and behind a brilliant purple raceme of cow vetch was a striking white spider³. Hanging from the spider's jaws was an orange moth like so many I'd seen throughout the hike. The dramatic vignette, coupled with the purple-on-white-on-orange color scheme, made me nearly gnash my teeth in an impotent wish to have my camera in my hands.

By the time I reached Cottons Road the battle between that part of me that wanted to call my sister back for a pickup, and the part that would be damned if it gave up this close to the end, grew more and more furious. The two went back and forth, but the latter came out on top slightly more often. I had also realized that I'd forgotten one of my old cardinal rules: for long hikes, never wear less than two pairs of socks. For a thirty mile hike it should have been no less than three - the more planes of slippage between foot and shoe, the less friction between innermost sock and foot, yes? Or at least that's how I've always explained to myself the indisputably glad results of wearing multiple pairs. Unfortunately it had been so long since I'd taken such a long hike that I utterly forgot the rule this morning. Oh, will I be paying for that in the days to come. At one point I jumped up onto a log and felt such pain that I thought I'd torn a blister open. I took a look and discovered that I hadn't, so I doggedly continued.

By the time I plodded back over the well-known route between Nelson Road and the cemetery I was so stiff, and my feet were so sore, that I came to assume a gait that was positively arthritic. I reached my car at about 8:20. Nearly delirious with joy, I creaked my way slowly down into the driver's seat and got ready to exercise my newfound bragging rights.

The first thing I did when I got home - after inhaling a few slices of the pizza my sister thankfully had left over - was to wash all exposed skin with rubbing alcohol to remove any poison ivy oils. Until then I hadn't considered the possibility that one could get a high - and an unpleasant one at that - from rubbing alcohol fumes.

That night I rejoined my friend and his family, but it was difficult to relax amidst my personal constellation of discomfort. Of all the stiff joints, complaining muscles and throbbing pains the most worrisome was the big toe on my left foot - I began to wonder if I might lose the nail. Today it feels better, so I'm no longer worried. Also, the redness on my legs has not developed into a rash or blisters, so apparently the itching and burning was more from stinging nettles than poison ivy. I'm very satisfied with how the hike turned out, and eager to do it again. After my blisters heal and my muscles stop yelling at me. With long pants. And oh, so very many pairs of socks.

¹This morning I told my sister about the glistening "web" covering the muskrat carcass and she brought up the possibility that it might have been made by slugs. I think she was right, because the strands did have the look of slime trails. I did a bit of Googling and found out that some snails feed on animal carcasses as well as plant material. Evidently there's a species in the Canastota area that loves carcasses.

²I didn't get a shot of them, but going from memory I think they may have been parasitic flat bark beetles.

³I identified it later as a female goldenrod spider.