At this time of year the evenings are very noisy with the incredible other-worldly sound of insects. However, it was still a surprise when the girls found this one dead on the driveway the other day. Well, I say dead - but it turns out that the rest of the family had another close insect encounter today when they arrived at a playground meet-up to find that to get from the car park to the play area they had to walk through a mass of huge hornet-like wasps. In fact they were cicada killer wasps were unlikely to bother them, but are - as their name suggests - no friend of the large singing insects - paralysing them, dragging them to their nest, laying an egg inside and leaving them to be eaten alive from the inside by the next waspish generation. So - is this one dead, or just very stationary? No idea, but it's big and kind-of beautiful - and out in the garage. Just in case.
Beautuful??? Maybe in a kind of horrible, creepy crawly flyie thing kind of way, but otherwise, no. Really. No ;-)
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