A G O N Y

DISCLAIMER: I'm a huge nerd, and most of you will now probably think i am a weirdo, too.


Some of you know that I'm taking a Terrestrial Arthropod class in school. It's the best class I have ever taken, and it's turned me into a bug fanatic.

So, I was outside smoking this morning before I had to leave for class, and I saw this beauty crawling around in our back yard. I caught him with my bug net (which I always have on the back porch for situations just like this). I put him in a jelly jar and brought him to school to show all my friends (he was very popular!), and now they are super, super jealous. They'll probably be mad at me when I tell them that I let him go. He's really cool, and just too beautiful for words.

He's a Tarantula Hawk (Pepsis Mildei), which is a type of wasp (Order Hymenoptera if anyone cares). His body is actually black, but he has a royal blue irridescence and rust colored wings with matching antennae. These insects hunt tarantulas, sting and paralyze them, and drag them back to their holes for their larva to feed on.

They're not aggressive, but their sting is rated the second most painful insect sting on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. This guy Schmidt is some professor in Arizona that lets wasps and ants sting him and then rates them on a scale.

* 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
* 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
* 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
* 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
* 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
* 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
* 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
* 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
* 4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
* 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

Here are a few pictures, and I took one along with my hand so you can see how big he is. I know it's kind of hard to see him through the jar, but once he got out, he was just so fucking fast, I could barely keep up. I was also trying to maintain a distance of at least 5 feet between us! The last picture is not one that I took. I got that online to show how big they are when standing next to a tarantula. Isn't he beautiful?!!?!??!








This one NOT taken by me:

I remember reading about these as a kid. Isn't the spider still alive, just paralyzed when the larvae hatch and start eating? And if I remember right isn't the mama wasp already dead by then? Regardless that's a pretty evil looking critter. Did you let it sting you to make a pain comparison?

you have some weird ass fetishes girl.

Yes Grihm, it's something like that. She paralyzes the tarantula, then drags it to her hole for her babies. I have read that she will lay eggs inside the spider so they hatch and eat it from the inside out, and I have also read that the larva just burrow their way in, making sure not to eat the organs so the spider stays alive as long as possible. It's truly fascinating!

And you're right Doom, but I can't help it. These things are just so friggin cool.

What. The. Fuck.

Remind me never, ever, ever to stay at your place if I come visit San Diego.

I am allergic to wasps, that thing would send me in to anephelactic(sp?) shock within about 90 seconds flat.

I've been stung by Paper Wasps twice, second time I was hospitalized, and I now carry an epinephrin shot with me in my purse 24/7.

But yeah, it is gorgeous, nice find, and damn girl, you got a steel va-jay-jay to want to be so close to that sucker!

How did that not find it's way into some terrarium with some unsuspecting tarrantula?

OMG I JUST realized we have those here, I've seen several of them over the summer, and our dipshit pest control dude said it was a beetle, and I was always like "wtf, it has a wasp body" and now I know, is IS a wasp. Holy shit!

I've been stung by a pretty large variety of critters in my time, and I'd agree with that professor except for the yellow jackets... I'd rate them significantly higher than honey bees, but not quite as bad as wasps. Honey bees aren't really that bad, because sure, the sting hurts, but it's only one. Wasps and Yellowjackets sting you a bunch of times before they finally decide to fuck off, the little bastards.

Never been stung by a scorpion, or bitten by a poisonous spider or snake, however (only a non-poisonous snake, and it was a small one, but then again I was like 8, so it looked pretty large to me back then).

Doomsayer wrote:you have some weird ass fetishes girl.

You should see what I have to do to get a hummer these days.

-Remagi

I wouldn't be too worried Arlie. Yes it's a wasp, but they are not aggressive. I have one I caught for my insect collection (it's like 20% of our grade), and I caught it when it was crawling on the leg of my shorts. It's not going to attack you. They are definitely intimidating though.

Remagi's post made me chuckle, but the fact that Adrie totally ignored it in her following post made me laugh harder.

I wonder if she makes you dress up like The Monarch. =P

remagi wrote:

Doomsayer wrote:you have some weird ass fetishes girl.

You should see what I have to do to get a hummer these days.

-Remagi

whoa!

Prybutok wrote:I wonder if she makes you dress up like The Monarch. =P

I laughed far too hard at this.

Keep us updated on your bug finds.

Edit: Holy shit, I thought that guy was just ticking off a list of things he'd been stung by, not getting stung on purpose. And he writes about it like a Scotch connoisseur. From Wikipedia:

The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior.[3] The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural chloroform, and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stinger facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the glove onto his hand. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full ten minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years.[4]

Hey Adrie, here's one for you: Spider eats Bird