Please excuse the grim picture but I just came back in from the garden having let the dogs out a final time and found this squished on the kitchen floor. Sorry not a great pic but best I could do before flushing it down the loo!
The dogs seem fine but now am worried as it does look a bit like the pictures of the caterpillar I am worried about when I Google it… 
The dogs just stayed in the top garden although there are two big pine trees much further down the garden.
I think they are normally more brown and in their thousands!
Do you have nests nearby? (the nests look like a ball of candy floss in the tree.)
Thanks for your reply. There is a wood a couple of km away where I saw lots of nests. ( I stopped going there after that).
Hard to tell, did it look as if there were brown-red splodges along the back?
On balance I would say not. The hairs don’t look clumped enough and I can’t see the splodges and there’s only one!
There are loads of hairy caterpillars and most are good things. So probability is also that it’s not.
Eeeeeek!!
Sorry! 
They are pretty easy to spot as when they have fallen from the candy floss nest there will be a chain of them on the ground. Unlikely a single one like the photo.They are poisonous, so keep your dogs well away - fortunately my German Shepherd is not at all interested.
And humans as well! Local gardener lost an eye. It’s the hairs that are the danger and they can float around. If I had processionary caterpillar nests in my garden I would have the tree(s) down.
We chopped 2 trees down due to the hairy beast nests.
But surely if you chop the trees the dangerous stuff goes everywhere? How do you deal with everything once you’ve felled it?
Burn them
Is ‘t it easier just to control the nests? Seems rather excessive when 50€ on traps would do it.
Do you know they work 100%?
I have read too many horror stories of what can happen to dogs that investigate them. I wasn’t prepared to risk the health of the dog for 2 non-native trees.
If properly installed and maintained, then yes.
Non-native trees should be cut down in any case, because they do not support the local animals and carry pests in, we really do not need!
