Last week we had some friends visiting from Dungog. Actually, just as an aside, I’ve always thought “Dungog” sounded like the name for a hideous swamp-dwelling serpent. Camera pans to a fetid bog where dozens of dismembered soldiers lay in the eerie mist…black-cloaked man on horseback mutters “only a Dungog could have done such butchery”. But anyway, I digress.
So my mate Dan and I were enjoying a rather lively conversation on my new veranda about starving peasants cooking up their children during famines in China, when a most remarkable creature joined us.
A brightly coloured, rather sizable wasp suddenly appeared at the centre of our attention. Large wasps will do that – draw attention I mean. I developed a life-long wariness of large wasps after being brutally mauled by a swarm of cranky potter wasps while mowing my Nanna’s lawn. That was over thirty years ago, but the memory is indelibly imprinted on my amygdala.
Somewhat unusually, this orange interposer was scrabbling across the timber deck backwards rather than flying as you’d expect a wasp to do. Upon closer inspection, as we both leaned in for a nosey-gander, she was clearly labouring under the strain of a hauled load. Clasped in her dark mandibles was a rather unfortunate spider. The wasp and spider appeared to be going on a romantic picnic together but this little outing would not end well for the spider I’m afraid.
Spider wasps are skilled hunters (and very likely psychopaths), tracking down all manner of spiders whereupon they seize and paralyse them. The hapless arachnid is then towed back to a prepared lair where a single egg is deposited upon its person. Thus indisposed, the spider becomes a living meal-ticket for the developing wasp grub, who leaves its vital organs for dessert. Yeah…and you thought Alien was a bad hombre?
Dan and I sat perched on the lounge watching this grisly undertaking. The spider wasp cheerfully navigated across the deck between our feet, eventually dragging its torpid load up a nearby chair like a mafia operative chucking a body off a mountainside. And then, to our delight she took flight. Pulling full power now, she slowly gained height across the deck, alighting at last at a small void in the mudbricks. The spider was unceremoniously stuffed into the darkness from where it would never leave.
After a long while of waiting for the wasp to re-emerge, Dan I returned to our conversation, but oddly enough I felt a little queasy and no longer had an appetite for talking about devoured children.