Tarantula Hawk

Today Evan and I went to the little park up a couple of streets from where we live. Next to the play equipment there were scads and oodles of bees doing their thing on some shrubby bushes with tiny white flowers. As I walked by, something completely weird and alien caught my eye. This:


I'm certainly no bug expert, but I immediately knew this was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Ever. It had the body of a wasp, but it was enormous (a good two inches long) and blue, and its wings and antennae were bright orange. I saw several of them in the same vicinity, and I have to admit that my curiosity trumped my caution. I had to get closer...


And closer...


...to take pictures with my cell phone. While I don't want them crawling on me or getting inside my house, I find bugs to be pretty fascinating. Nathan's interest has probably piqued my own, and I've actually learned quite a lot in the last couple of years thanks to the library. And I don't necessarily find them all that scary, even when I really, really should (case in point: the three black widows we've found around our house in the last month). I sort of laugh at people who say their biggest fear in all the world is spiders. Really? Not death. Not public speaking. Not natural disasters or car crashes. Spiders?

But........back to the freak of nature from the park. It took me less than two minutes on Google (I love you, internet) to learn that this creature is called the Tarantula Hawk. Is that the best name for an insect you've ever heard? It is a wasp, and it hunts, as you may have guessed, tarantulas. The female paralyzes the tarantula and then lays an egg on the spider's belly. That egg hatches, the larva burrows into the tarantula's abdomen, it eats its internal organs, and (you might want to look away if you haven't already) it tears open the tarantula's abdomen to get out. Holy crap!

No, it doesn't kill people. Just tarantulas. But. BUT. Tarantula hawk stings are considered to be the most painful of any North American insect. THE MOST PAINFUL! And here I was, with my two-year-old nearby, taking pictures of these beasts. What's wrong with me?

Anyway. You have to admit they're beautiful and intriguing. And had I not witnessed these guys out in the wild today, I would have probably gone my whole life without knowing about how cool they are. But if you do happen to see one someday, I'd highly recommended admiring it from a distance rather than taking pictures of it. Up close. Like two inches away. As I did.