Wasp Eating 37 Spiders

On the weekend I was cleaning old clay wasp nests of the eaves of our house when I accidentally scraped one off that hadn’t hatched it’s youngsters yet. Inside it where 37 spiders in total, all alive (twitching) but paralyzed by a parent wasp who had collected them to lay baby’s in. These wasps make little clay homes and stuff them full of spiders. Charming.

However, I realise these wasps keep all the spiders away and as we live in a very typical Australian bushland valley I leave them until they have hatched. Otherwise we would be inundated with spiders. Hat tip to our little spider hunting wasps.