Spider Wasp

Last week I witnessed an amazing feat of nature taking place in the yard.  I think most of you have seen this already, but just wanted to do a quick post on it.  While looking for a hummingbird I thought had hit the window, I came across a wasp dragging a wandering spider (I said tarantula in the video before I knew what it was) so of course I had to film it.  These wasps find spiders (the larger the spider, the larger the baby wasp will grow) and paralyze the poor spiders but keep them alive.  They lay an egg on its abdomen and when the egg hatches, it starts to eat the spider alive…waiting to eat the major organs until last.  It’s a horrible death for the spider and I felt really torn as to what to do.  But I let nature take its course.  However, the really bad thing about this one was that the wasp was trying to get the spider into a vent hole and after trying for hours, couldn’t do it so she left it and went to get another spider the next day.  The only funny thing about Part 1 was me almost being attacked by the wasp (not so funny at the time).  I escaped thankfully because the sting is supposedly a 4 on a pain scale of 1-4 (4 being the highest/most painful).  I read they don’t like to waste their venom and typically don’t attack humans unless threatened (or in my case, insulted).

So I went out the next morning to find Part 2 taking place which I made a video of (long video…about 12 minutes) and saw the wasp dragging the new, smaller spider to its ultimate resting place inside the vent.  Today, 4 or 5 days later, the wasp is still visiting the vent.  I was under the impression that it would lay the egg after it got the spider and just leave.  So I don’t know what’s going on in there, but I’m pretty sure that poor spider is still alive and suffering (if spiders can actually suffer).  I just buried the original one after keeping it in the freezer for a few days because I didn’t want a zombie spider to be paralyzed for god knows how long and suffer(?).