A Bit More About Country Corgi Critters

First, we wanted to answer a few of the comments we got on our last post about the Tarantula Hawks. Mom hates spiders, too, but isn’t totally arachnophobic (like her brother-in-law who goes into a fetal position at the site of more than one spider of any kind). She only dances if one gets on her. The tarantulas around here aren’t particularly poisonous unless you happen to have an allergic reaction.

One of Mom’s crazy sons likes them and will pick them up and play with them (She thinks that's NUTS!!!) She will have one taken off the property or at least to a wood pile usually. The one we took pics of was almost frozen and almost dead when we found it last November. She set it out in the sun & took pics, but it never came around… She thought it had probably been ‘seeded” with a T. Hawk, so she put the body in a jar with a lid so that she would have it to show her grandson.

We don’t like those big spiders and they don’t like us. If we see one, it will usually rear up and looks like it is shouting really nasty bad words at us in “spider language.” We tend to leave them alone, and we don’t see them at all except during the late fall, and maybe only one or two around here every year or two… It is more on the roads while driving that we will see several.

Mom says we’ve never had one IN the house, though that one came close, being on the wall just outside the back door of the patio. We HAVE had snakes, scorpions and centipedes (which have a painful sting) come into the house.

The T. Hawks aren’t aggressive and won’t chase you like the Yellow Jackets. Mom doesn’t like ANY kind of wasp or bee, so she ducks a lot if there are some around, but isn’t really afraid of them… just doesn’t want them in her hair.

It’s the Brown Recluse Spiders that are really dangerous around here! The Black Widows, and Brown Widow Spiders can also make you kind of sick feeling for a while unless you are allergic and THAT can be a problem. Mom says, Praise God, she isn’t allergic because she’s been bitten by Black Widows a few times.

These three kinds of nasty spiders are smaller and hide in dark places. They will get you if you don’t carry a light and check any dark place you need to put your hand into… like when feeding horses at night.

We will probably post more about these nasty critters some other time. Mom just wanted you all to know that she thinks the rattlesnakes around here are a MUCH worse threat to us, but she prays for us a lot about the nasty critters in this area, and is glad that we have been really smart about pointing the nasty things out to her … Well, DUH! We ARE Corgis!!!

When we see a nasty, we bark our “ALERT!” bark and bounce back and forth at it, staying out of reach, until she comes and takes care of the problem appropriately! Auntie Sadie is the one that taught us that. Border Collies are really smart too, I guess… Auntie Sadie sure is!

Also, about the Road Runners… Mom’s not crazy about those either as they are mean to other birds and animals. They eat eggs, kill chicks and other small birds as well as lizards. We will post more on them later sometime, too.

Sorry Dott hasn’t wanted to take her turn at posting lately. She started eating like a HORSE instead of her usual “bird like” appetite a few weeks ago, and then, suddenly, she seems to have lost a lot of her appetite and is kind of dumpy and sleeping a lot more. She does get out and run when we do go out, but she doesn’t seem to be able to “fly” like she used to when she jumps up on things.

Mom is watching her closely and she doesn’t really seem to be showing any signs of sickness, but she is acting differently, and so we are still wondering about the possible “Puppy” thing…

Tarantula Hawks

BG here: When we did our blog on horehound plants and the nasty burrs they produce, we mentioned Tarantula Hawks. We had a few people that asked us what they are, so we decided to write this blog to let you know about them. I talked with Mom about it and she gave me a lot of interesting info to pass on.

We get tons of these huge wasps around here all summer long! Whenever you water anything, a bunch of them will show up, and they drown all the time in our doggy swimming pool and in the horse water barrels. Here are a bunch on the roof of the grain room.

My grandma, Mist, was very allergic to them. She bit one when she was only about a year old and Mom noticed about 5-10 minutes later, that she was rubbing all over the ground and when she looked closely at her, she found that she was breaking out in hives all over her belly, and probably all over the rest of her body and her face was getting very swollen. The vet she called, told her to give her benadryl as soon as possible, 25 mg. per 15 lbs., and repeat every 4-6 hours if symptoms returned. That was about 2 pills for Mist, and the swelling went down after about 10-15 minutes. Mom had to repeat that for about 24 hours every 6 hours. Grandma Mist got over it, but she stayed away from those wasps after that.

So far, Auntie Sadie has a tendency to chase them whenever she sees them. I guess she isn’t allergic because I know she’s caught them several times and spits them out real quick, shaking her head. I tend to leave them alone unless they fly right beside me.

Mom told us that a tarantula hawk is a wasp that hunts tarantulas to feed its babies. They are some the biggest wasps around and can grow up to 2 inches long. They are kind of pretty because they have a shiny, almost blue-black body, and dark, red-orange wings. They have long legs, with hooked claws on the ends for grabbing and fighting with the big spiders.

Wikipedia says that “the stinger of a female tarantula hawk can be up to 1/3 inch (7 mm) long, and delivers a sting which is rated among the most painful in the insect world.” I know they hurt like the dickens!!!!

During the fall around here, usually October, we will see the big tarantulas walking all over the place… sometimes, several in one day on the roads. (The one in this picture was found on the wall by the door of our back patio.) That is when the male tarantulas are out looking for a mate. They don’t eat when they are doing this and get really skinny, so the tarantula hawks would rather find a fat old female, and will look for them in their burrows, grab ‘em, and sting them to paralyze them.

They take the spider to their nest and lay an egg IN the spider, and then cover the hole. The baby, when it hatches, sucks the juices of the spider and then eats it while it is still alive, from the inside out… Lovely, huh! When they are grown, they come out of the husk of the spider and fly away.

We found out from Wikipedia that one of the only things that will eat them are those mean, ugly Road Runner Birds we get around here. The wasps will also, get themselves drunk on fermented fruit sometimes… so drunk that they can’t even fly for a while! They must be a pretty thirsty bug to do that and to drown themselves, by the bunches, in whatever water they can find.

I know that when our water is running and Mom goes out to bathe the horses or us, she usually will spray down an area away from where ever she is going to bathe us first, to draw the wasps there, so they aren’t flying all around us as she works.