Our Little Stinker

This afternoon Caroline was happily playing on the floor with her toys while I was happily sitting next to her and catching up on my DVR'd TV shows. After a while I realized Caroline was being especially quiet and that she was not next to me anymore. I looked across the room and watched as she silently stalked some kind of bug that was crawling across our living room floor. Now I'm not skittish when it comes to bugs, so I didn't make a scene. I was actually curious to see what she would do. As I got closer, I realized it was a stink bug. At that moment I began to wonder: do stink bugs really stink?

I grabbed my IPhone so I could take a picture of Caroline on the hunt. Just then, Caroline reached out and snatched up the bug in her hand! Luckily I caught her hand before it went to her mouth, but prying open her clenched fist took a few seconds. That was a few seconds too long. I was hit with a wave of nasty odor as Caroline's hand opened and the bug fell back onto the floor, belly up and legs flailing.

Caroline was all for snatching up that bug again, but I quickly whisked her away to the kitchen to de-stink her hands. Three anti-bacterial hand washes later, I finally got the odor off Caroline's hands. Being a slightly paranoid first time mom, I then immediately took Caroline into the office so I could Google stink bugs to find out if they are poisonous. Luckily, they are not and I didn't have to go into full-on panic mode :)
Here's a picture of my little bug catcher and her unfortunate prey.