Tarantula Hawks

So you may have heard me mention tarantula hawks before. Remember? Well, in case you don’t remember, they are the HUGE black wasps with orange wings that like to bustle about in our grass. I have a dread of stinging bugs to begin with but ones that are that size are way worse. They are so big that you can hear their wings rasping from quite a distance away. Ugh! They give me the creeps!

Not only all of that BUT I did some online digging on these horrendous creatures and apparently they have one of the worst stings EVER! The only “sting” that is worse than theirs is the “Bullet Ant” which is supposed to feel about like getting shot if it stings you. Yeah, I read some interesting stuff. This dude actually let ON PURPOSE all kinds of stinging bugs sting him just so that he could create a scale to measure their stings by. I’m thinking he’s a few fries short to be honest. But according to him this particular wasp is a bad bad stinger!

So with that in the back of my head, I now have a running fear that one of the kids is going to get tangled up with one of these things one day. It may happen. That’s just the way it is. If it does happen… I hope it’s YEARS from now!

We’ve taken precautions, such as having a can of wasp spray readily available, but sometimes you just cant see them when they’re way down in the grass. That makes me nervous! The kids, well boys at least, know to come get us if they see a wasp. Although the other day I caught them trying to kill one by throwing dirt at it. I informed them that it doesn’t work that way and to just STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!

So this post is just to show you what these things are really like. Take a look.
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Just a funny tid-bit, the boys have dubbed these things “Bat Wasps.” I have no idea where that came from exactly, except that I bought Stu one of the Batman movies, which they did NOT watch, but did look at the DVD case and talk about “batman.” Maybe they think the black wasps look similar. 😉 Wasn’t one of Batman’s nemesis a Green Hornet or something??

Makes your skin kinda crawl doesn’t it? They. Are. Huge! I had a bucket of kitchen scraps outside ready to go to the compost pile, but I wasn’t about to touch it with those things enjoying the watermelon! See how happy they were sucking on that juice? their little antennae are all curly. Awwww… not!
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If it’s any consolation, and it is too me since I have to coexist (until I get my hands on the wasp spray) with these beasts, they are not aggressive. They buzz around, dive into the grass to get sips of water, I presume, from the moist soil, they are ugly, noisy, and scary looking, but they don’t just attack people. So… that’s good.

Still… I’m pretty sure I could do without them all together… unless of course that meant more tarantulas! *GASP!!*

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