ambush bug bite!

by Audrey
(Wyoming)

I had never heard of or seen these bugs before I saw one a day or two ago on my laundry line. I thought it very interesting and unusual. I couldn't get it to fly away, so had to flick it off of the sheet I was taking off of the line.

Then this morning, I was bending over some yarow flowers to reach a weed I was pulling and felt a painful sting down my shirt! I quickly looked down to see the source: one of those exotic-looking yellow and black insects I had never seen before a couple of days ago. It left a painful pinprick of a bite that then swelled to about a centimeter in size, like a mosquito bite with a red pinprick in the middle of it. It stung for at least a half hour afterwards.

It took me quite awhile to find images of the culprit so that I could identify it, but I finally found that it was one of these ambush bugs. I see that human bites are rare, but I definitely disturbed this little bugger's territory when I was leaning over the yarrow flowers to pull the weeds behind them. Life lesson: don't let my bosom come into contact with the ambush bug's territory. Tender skin > > > painful bite!!