Man, there's no time to waste. I gotta get this excavation finished, like yesterday! Those 'Cadas' are swarming like crazy. If my babies are gonna make it through this coming winter, I gotta have my pantry full of them big, juicy boys.
Well, I guess that's good for starters. Looks like this is gonna be an all day job.
Damn! What happened? I worked so hard digging this hole. I went out and caught my first cada. Come back with it, and looks like some danged fool stepped on all that hard work. Now what am I gonna do with my catch while I get this hole cleaned out?
Well, I was gonna lay this load down somewhere til I got the hole cleaned out, and now I can't even get airborne with it. It sure got awful heavy all of a sudden. What gives?
Whew, I gotta let go of this thing, get a better hold on it and try again.
What thuh heck? Somethin' big is stealing my cada! This calls for action.
Wanna play tug o war, do you?
And it's lift off. Yeah! Bye Bye, sucker!!
The Eastern Cicada Killer Wasp, Sphecius speciosus, is said to be a solitary animal. That may be, but they sure don't mind close neighbors. My lawn is becoming riddled with their nests.
They are considered beneficial in that they help keep the cicada population in check, thereby greatly reducing damage done to deciduous trees.
Interesting is that though these wasps look very dangerous and paralyze their victims with venom, not actually killing them; I haven't come across one account of them stinging people. Many pictures depict people holding several in their hands at one time.
It would have been much better if I had filmed the wasp rather than taking pictures, but that would have been a little hard to do. The wasp was on the ground, dragging the cicada into its nest in the ground. I picked up the cicada which caused the wasp to let go of it.
I held the cicada up in the air. The wasp was circling around and saw it. It was determined to take the cicada back. What you don't see in the pictures is, the wasp grabbed the cicada from my hand and took off with it. Too bad it wasn't filmed.
