Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the thing that was coming towards me. I flapped my arms in attempt to get it away from me, thinking it was some just kind of beetle. I looked back, my eyes towards the ground, to see what kind of bug nearly landed on me out of nowhere.
The offending bug was not on the ground. Instead, it was flying straight towards me, gigantic, and clearly angry. Without second thought, I broke into a run. Another look back showed me the giant scary stinging thing was still chasing me. I was on my way to the garage to get something out of the car, but instead, I did a big loop in the driveway and ran back up the stairs, the huge bee-ish thing hot on my heels.
“I’m not getting the stuff out of the car, ” I told Aaron after I sprinted to our apartment like a crazy person.
He looked at me oddly, “A GIANT BEE/WASP/HORNET THING CHASED ME!!!” I told him, half yelling from all the adrenaline. I think he was stifling laughter, but humoured me and just said ok.
I waited a few minutes and then went back out. Surely the freakish wasp was gone?
I neared the corner of our building, almost to the steps that lead to the garages. And there it was, straight at me again. I spun around as fast as I could and bolted back up to our apartment.
“It’s out there again! It chased me! I want to get a photo.” I grabbed my camera and went back outside, this time creeping slowly, stalking the freakish wasp thing.
It was hanging out on a brick on the outside of the apartment building. As I crept closer, I found the unexpected; it was not alone. There, up against the wasp, was a spider. A huntsman spider. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a huntsman spider, but they are not exactly small. I couldn’t tell which was the hunter and which was the prey, but I was leaning towards the spider as hunter.
Photo copyright 2013 Sheri Thomson, unauthorised use prohibited
After shooting a couple photos, I slowly backed away, then turned and sprinted back up the stairs to my apartment.
“You should see this Boo! There’s a spider there too! I don’t know which one is eating the other, but come and see!”
We crept out again, Aaron not so cautiously. He didn’t know what sort of aggression the giant stinger was capable of.
A couple of the neighbours from the building next door must have noticed all of my strange creeping and sprinting and asked from their balcony what we were looking at. After we told them, they came over to see the weirdness themselves.
By this stage, the spider and wasp were on the sidewalk and the guy next door decided he should step on it. He borrowed the woman from next door’s shoe, since he wasn’t wearing any of his own. As he neared the crazy thing, it flew up, away from the spider and chased him.
Clearly, it was the spider who was the victim.
We started throwing things from afar, in a vain attempt to squish the super bug, failing each time. The neighbour grabbed an old phone book from someone’s balcony and threw it straight on the wasp. A couple seconds later, it crawled out, unharmed.
Standing there, we debated what we should do. This thing was aggressive, chasing all who got too close, and no doubt would sting if given the chance. There were kids around (mine were sleeping, FYI), and we didn’t want any of them to get stung. We had to kill it.
Finally, the neighbour had an idea. He ran next door, grabbed the hose, and turned it on full blast, pinning the super wasp up against the bricks with it’s force.
Still, it wouldn’t die. It kept trying to fly up, out of the water, no doubt wishing it could come and sting us all. He sprayed for a good 5 minutes before we all realised it wasn’t going to work.
The water seemed to stun it at least, so Aaron found a stick and started poking it while the water was keeping it tame. Despite all the pokes, it kept on living.
Finally, about 10 pokes and almost an hour after we first discovered the freak wasp, it was nearly decapitated and almost dead.
Aaron holding up the giant stinging thing
After comparing my photos to photos on the internet, I figure the freak wasp is actually a Sydney spider wasp, which is a particular species of the spider wasp. Luckily none of us got stung. Turns out, on a scale of 1-4 on the Schmidt Pain Index, the spider wasp has a sting of 4, noting that “the sting is described as blinding, fierce, and shockingly electric.”
Good thing we killed it. Better that we didn’t get stung in the process.
Also, it wasn’t eating the spider at all. The females sting the spider, rendering it paralysed. They then lay an egg in it’s abdomen. When the egg hatches, it feasts on the spider (who is still alive, I might add) from the inside. Ick.
You were amused, and you learned something, you should definitely vote for me!
If you enjoyed reading this, please vote for my blog. All you have to do is click the link below. That’s it… Clicking the link brings you to the Top Mommy Blogs home page. You don’t have to do anything else. Any clicks from my site to theirs is a vote. THANKS!
Like my blog? ‘Like’ it on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mommy-Adventures/203964682967827?ref=tn_tnmn
Pin It You officially have my permission to pin this (as long as it links back to my site). Just don’t act like you wrote it. Because you didn’t….
Copyright 2013 Sheri Thomson
Mommy Adventures 
I have never seen one of those! Who knew a wasp would lay eggs inside a spider…. We sure do have some weird stuff.
I hadn’t seen one either! It was scary, and disgusting! And the fact that the spider is still alive until the larvae eats it for a while from the inside out…. Ick.
You certainly have some vicious bugs there. Did the spider ever move through all of that or was it already paralyzed?
It was already paralysed. Of course, at the time, we though it was dead. I’m not actually sure what happened to the spider, it washed away somewhere when the hose was on.
That sucker is HUGE!!
I thought the wasps in South Africa were huge.
Ps: I wouldve just stayed away and not gone back to the car! Cudos to you!
I figured it would have been gone when I went back out. I didn’t know it had the spider, I just thought it was chillin’ on the warm bricks (the sun was going down). I hope you don’t have heaps of wasps over there, those things are crazy!
For your sake, I hope that the wasp had not had time to lay eggs in the spider. No one needs more of those mutant wasps flying around.
The very next day, the neighbour said he saw another one on the outside of his window (better than on the inside!!). Ick. At least we rid the world of one of the suckers, and possibly two.