That wasn't a smart idea-cactus adventure

Was out in the yard and I have a small collection of cactus plants. Well, one had grown another ear so I thought I'd snap it off and put it in another pot to grow. I checked the coarseness of the prickly things and it just seemed fuzzy so I grabbed it bare handed and snapped it off. As I'm holding it, I feel a slight tingling from my fingers...I put the cactus down and look at my fingers. The yellowish fine prickly things are covering my fingers in the hundreds. They just don't brush off but seemed to be barbed so as I try to remove them, some get embedded deeper. Now it's beginning to sting, they are so fine and brittle, as I try to pluck them out, they break off.

After a bit of jumping up-down at my stoopidity, I wet a towel and brush in the grain of how they are embedded. That got most of them but there are about 10 or so that broke off in each finger so as I type this up, each press of the keys reminds me of my brilliance. As I look at my fingertips, I can faintly see the fine hairs pushed just below the skin. A good lesson..wear gloves when handling cactus. :shakehead

I'm so sorry! I have touched a cactus before and I got several needles and it felt just horrible, one of the worst kinds of pain.

A great way to get splinters out is to put duct tape on them and then rip it off, which you could try, but with your cactus needles I'm not sure whether or not it would work. So maybe you need to see the doctor, but I don't know.

Two words:
fine tweezers
magnifying glass
patience

(OK, that's more than 2 words) :nana:

Sorry, for you Ra - been there, done that. The only way for me was to pull each spine out individually using fine-tipped tweezers.

"I touched the cactus"
( Friend in school did that with one on the teacher's desk in 1st grade )

Well, I used to have a small cactus as well on the patio and I've "brushed up" against it and got needles on the back of my hand as well.

There was also the fiberglass wool I was playing with once. Makes you feel very itchy.

I know the feeling, but only my incident didn't involve embedded cactus material

I was trying to transplant my cactus ball [Echinocactus Grusonii] when it fell and I tried to catch it....it seemed like a good idea, catching a 5 pound ball fulling under the influence of gravity...right?

ouch, flesh wounds, many of them just skin deep...but it bothers you because every time you handle something your brushing against the wounds...and this was both hands

When i was a child, we played outside all Summer.

Every field and woods nearby was always LOADED with " stickers " !

I believe the technical term is " Sand Burrs ".
Surroundings always had very sandy soil.


These plants/weeds had tons of yellow, spherical "spikey" barbed seeds,
no larger than 10mm in diameter.


Even if you managed to avoid getting 'em on your skin,
they would attach themselves to yer' socks, shoelaces, and trouser legs

By the HUNDREDS ! :shakehead


Then comes the bad part . . . .


Gotta' pick them off, one by one


And each spike is barbed, so it goes into flesh
easier than it comes back out. :mecry:


So many times, i would handle each one so very carefully,
hoping to pull it away from the fabric,
withOUT puncturing my fingertips in the process.


During this very painful operation, i realized that PLIERS
would be a perfect tool for this procedure.


That helped a lot when i got home.


But i really wish i coulda' had a modern Plier Multi-tool
attached to my belt.


Just like the well-prepared outdoorsman of Today.

:thumbsup:

_

I feel for you RA40, I did the exact same thing. I was walking through a plant store and saw a furry cactus. Of course I just had to touch it. Heck I didn't know anything so fuzzy could be so sharp. Running water over my hand seemed to help get the spikes out.

AVOID SPIKES

I've unintentionally had a similar cactus experience a time or two. A trick I learned is to take some of the white, Elmers school glue and pour it over the area where the stickers are. Let it dry, then when you peel the glue off it'll pull just about all the little needles out. Might be worth trying.

The only time I grabbed a cactus was when I was maybe three years old. My mom said I just looked at the ball in amazement, then grabbed it with both hands, made a face as if I'd eaten something very sour and then cried for several hours.

That was a moment to photograph but I was more intent in removing as many as possible before they got pushed in deeper. Every few moments, I'll touch something to discover where one of them is still stuck. This brought back memories when I was a child and running into-through a rosebush. Not a fun memory either.

reminds me of that Far Side cartoon "How Nature Says, "Don't Touch""

I won't say who , but no matter how tasty anyone suggests they are, never try to eat one.

What greenLED & DieselTech said...additionally rubber cement worked well when JOshooter (our oldest son - very busy with Civil Engineering studies & work - doesn't log on much these days) was a couple years old (he's 21 now) and fell into a small cactus.

Applied the rubber cement, let it dry (with help), peeled it off. Then we resorted to greenLED's suggested method to "clean up" the rest.