A couple of weeks ago, whilst camping in one of the more remote regions of the Macleay River gorge complex, I was treated to one of nature’s most macabre and ancient rituals. On the one-hand it could best be described as a brutal, off-the-street-styled targeted kidnapping operation by a lone-wolf female assassin, but just as easily it is simply the story of a diligent mother shopping to feed her hungry children.
Let me regale you with this tale.
First, the setting of the scene: it is mid-morning, the sun has only just climbed above the hulking tsunami of deeply shadowed earth that is the eastern side of the gorge. We sit by a small campfire sipping coffee, the freshly mown grass glistens with dormant moisture from the previous afternoon’s storm. Brown Quails sneak furtively through the dense shrubbery, a mob by the river calling ardently to another higher up the slope. Their enquiring whistles make me smile. I adore quails.
“Suddenly, mere metres from where we sit a violent abduction gets underway. A Spider Hunting Wasp moved with obvious purpose, a combination of rapid scrambling, probing and short hovers.”
I knew from previous reading that this striking, orange and black wasp would have spent the morning preparing a clay sarcophagus, located in a tunnel in the sandy ground not far from where she currently hunted.
If all went well for her over the next little while, that terrible tomb would soon be occupied by a paralysed spider, on which she would deposit a single egg. Over the next week the unfortunate spider would be eaten alive by the wasp pupae, leaving its vital organs till last.
And now, as I watched on with morbid fascination, she found what she’d been looking for, a large wolf spider. The spider for its part, seemed to understand all-too-well the unbelievably shitty future on offer should the brightly coloured assassin catch it. But it’s escape strategy can only be described as pathetic. It is difficult to fathom, how after some 400 million years of being on Earth, the best this rather formidable spider could do was to rush about in blind panic. The wasp seemed nonplussed, simply descending on the hapless arachnid, its stinger landing a quick jab, and that was that. Spider go sleepy-bye-byes.
Over the next half hour or so, the wasp dragged the paralysed spider across the lawn. Only slightly smaller than her own good-self, this would be like dragging your sleeping mother-in-law across Bellingen Island. Every so often she would release the spider and hover a few inches above the grass, presumably getting her bearings on where the burrow entrance lay. And then she was gone.
I might have walked past a thousand such nondescript holes in my day without ever suspecting that sequestered in each were dozens of paralysed abductees, their fates sealed in an ancient horror that makes the Alien movies seem like fairy tales. RIP spiders.