Beasts of Indian Creek

A couple weekends ago my buddy and I were enjoying the end of the day sun out by Hamburger Rock. As we watched majestic parasailers squeel through the sky with large fans on their butts we heard a loud lazy buzz around our heads. What I saw was the most fersome of flying insects I have ever seen. 2+ inches long, 4 inch wingspan, with a shiny black body and vibrant orange wings. This massive wasp chased us accross the desert till we stood our ground on a rock outcropping. We struck out with our hats and forced the beast to retreat. I recently went on the google to find the beast and it turns out it is a Tarantula Hawk. Which looks something like this...

This leads me to my question for you good folks. These creatures apparently have the second most potent insect sting and use this to paralyze tarantulas. They then lay eggs in the Tarantula which upon hatching feast upon the spider's innards. Have you seen Tarantulas in Indian Creek???? I would love to see one some time! Heres a picture of the beasts in question fighting it out...

Forrest...you and your buddy are extremely fortunate that you weren't stung by that aggressive Tarantula Hawk as their sting is exceedingly painful. Google insect stings and it rates never the top. Tarantula Hawks are known to back quite docile and rarely sting without provoction.

For your entertainment:

Stung by a tarantula hawk (on purpose)

Here are some wasp larvae on a Tomato Horn Worm in my garden this summer (nowhere near Indian Creek, but interesting still). The larvae will consume the worm alive as they turn into baby wasps. Not sure what kind though.

Oh lawd Im glad I didnt get stung! For those of you that dont want to watch the goobers whole video (although he does fall into a cactus chasing the wasp) skip to 10:45

There is a smaller blue version around the LI sound that are super cool to watch as they go under decks and fight/catch spiders. Seeing them in action is pretty f'ing cool, especially when the spider is 5 times their size. I can think of a certain person here on Mtn Proj who has nightmares about these flying beasts!

A. Michael wrote:Here are some wasp larvae on a Tomato Horn Worm in my garden this summer (nowhere near Indian Creek, but interesting still). The larvae will consume the worm alive as they turn into baby wasps. Not sure what kind though.

Around here (New England) paper wasps are common and they lay their eggs on tomato hornworms. It's too bad, the hornworms turn into nice moths if they don't get eaten by the larva.

And, bringing this back to the tarantula hawk, paper wasps are graded a 2 or 3 on the Schmidt sting pain index. Tarantula hawks are a 4. I've been stung by paper wasps a couple times, and it's extremely painful, much worse than a bee or a yellowjacket: It feels like you're burning your skin on something that you can't get away from. I'll stay away from the tarantula hawks.

There were hundreds of tarantula hawks flying around on my last visit to Ibex. Very creepy, though as mentioned they are docile as long as you aren't a tarantula.

Yes, there are tarantulas in the Creek.

Here is a picture of one we ran into at the Bridger Jacks campground.

Not much to go off of for scale, but he was smaller than my palm, and he was big enough that we saw him in the road ahead of us as we were driving and so we got out to have a look.

I have DEFINITELY seen tarantulas at Indian Creek. One day I was in my truck leaving the Optimator parking lot and I saw a big hairy tarantula creeping across the dirt road!

At the time I didn't realize he may have had a very grim fate...

theyre in the deserts around red rock as well.