“Blinding, Fierce, and Shockingly Electric”

This morning in Estabrook Park, the air was a little colder, the wind was a little lighter, and the clouds where a whole lot thicker than yesterday. Ah well, Meat Loaf is proven right yet again. The wildlife was pretty much the same, except that I didn’t see any deer, and this magnificent creature, a red-tailed hawk, put in a somewhat-veiled appearance over the upstream island instead.

The good news is that this finally gives me the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, to tell you a fascinating story of life and death in Nicaragua. It started on Saturday morning after breakfast at our lodge on Ometepe. I’ve been calling it a hotel, but lodge really fits better. Anyway, we were walking back to our cabin when I spotted this enormous, shiny, dark-blue wasp on the ground. I would estimate its size and shape to be a good match for the first two digits of my pinkie finger, so I snapped this picture and tried to reposition myself for a better look.

By the time I had moved, so had the wasp, and I watched it latch onto a clump of something and begin to tow it. Upon closer inspection, that clump of something turned out to be a smallish tarantula! And that makes the wasp a Mexican tarantula-hawk wasp (Pepsis mexicana). Meanwhile, my sources tell me that the hapless tarantula is likely a Costa Rican blue front tarantula (Aphonopelma crinirufum).

As amazing as all that sounds, a giant wasp battling a tarantula, like some B horror movie, the story of what happens next is even grimmer. The wasp sting paralyzes the spider but does not kill it. Instead, the wasp drags it into a burrow, possibly even the spider’s own burrow, and lays an egg on it. “When the wasp larva hatches, it creates a small hole in the spider’s abdomen, then enters and feeds voraciously, avoiding vital organs for as long as possible to keep the spider alive.” How’s that for breakfast hot and fresh?

But wait, there’s more! Out of curiosity, and not completely idle, either, I wondered how painful the sting would be of such a large wasp. Well, it “is rated near the top of the Schmidt sting pain index, second only to that of the bullet ant, and is described by Schmidt as “blinding, fierce[, and] shockingly electric”.” Fun, eh? Even funner, the warrior wasps we saw on Thursday also have “an extremely painful sting (rating at the highest level of 4 in the Schmidt sting pain index).” Sheesh! That’s two of the top three! Meat Loaf, you’ve made your point!

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Okay. Enough of that, and time for a pallet cleanser. Here’s a pretty limpkin that Deb spotted in the little marshy yard behind our cabin on Ometepe.

Here’s a young mantled howler monkey checking out the oddly hairless and pale apes on the ground below.

Finally, here’s one more gorgeous butterfly, a band-celled sister (Adelpha fessonia), from that amazing hike to see petroglyphs.

The forecast for tomorrow looks awesome, so maybe some little critters will finally show their faces.