Sorry if this freaks some out, saw something pretty cool today that I'd thought I'd share. For a few years, we've had a growing population of cicada killer wasps living the high life in a couple of our flower beds and our lawn for about a month in the summer. We were putting together a new grill in front of the the garage this morning, and witnessed three wasps bringing in their prey. We were going crazy trying to take pictures. Naturally, the good camera didn't want to work so I grabbed photos with my phone, though, not as good as the camera would have taken. One wasp, with a cicada in her grasp, crawled up the full 6 ft height of my husband so she could take off again from a high vantage point to make it to her underground tunnel to deposit the cicada. He handled it pretty well, being very careful to not let her go up his shorts or sleeves. When she started to climb up the back of his head, his threshold for patience with his entomologist-wife grew a little short.

Cicada killers are harmless. One of my mentors says he's never heard of anyone being stung, and his career is over 40 years in length.
The female cicada killers capture a live cicada, paralyze it, place it in an underground tunnel, and lay an egg on it. The cicada is lunch for the larva when it hatches.
We've become totally at ease around these scary looking insects. They even fly between our legs when we walk through the area where they've dug their tunnels. Today they would buzz by inches from our heads as we worked in the driveway.
It's experiences like this that drew me to the study of insects.
This is my fave cicada killer website.
I hope the pics turn out. I've not posted images on CF before and am taking a blind swing at using Flickr.
Cicada killers are harmless. One of my mentors says he's never heard of anyone being stung, and his career is over 40 years in length.
The female cicada killers capture a live cicada, paralyze it, place it in an underground tunnel, and lay an egg on it. The cicada is lunch for the larva when it hatches.
We've become totally at ease around these scary looking insects. They even fly between our legs when we walk through the area where they've dug their tunnels. Today they would buzz by inches from our heads as we worked in the driveway.
It's experiences like this that drew me to the study of insects.
This is my fave cicada killer website.
I hope the pics turn out. I've not posted images on CF before and am taking a blind swing at using Flickr.