Monday, September 9, 2019

The revival of the Pigeon Horntail Wasp

Last Saturday I was getting the pool ready to swim. I noticed a large bug floating on the water.  It was dead. Solid as a brick.  It looked like a massive wasp.  I used the net to scoop it out and put it on the hot tub cover.  It's legs were all curled in and it had drowned.  It's body was about twice as long as a normal wasp and it had what looked like a massive stinger coming out it's rear, but it wasn't exactly coming out where the stinger usually is.

Here's a couple pics I took:


After posting this pic on facebook asking people to help me identify it, I noticed the abdomen was starting to move slightly.  Nothing else. Just the abdomen portion.  I was thinking it was probably a female and there was a larvae inside that survived and was trying to get out.  Here's the facebook thread:

September 6 

What kind of insect is this? I know it’s not a spider, but I don’t have an insects album. Wasps aren’t as long as this. This is about twice as long.





Hello

Scott Cotten definitely nailed it.  Here is a great page dedicated to this insect:  Pigeon Horntail Wasp










After a while the legs started moving too. Just one leg, and after about 15 minutes, another leg.  Then it was able to barely crawl along with those two legs.  Within about 1 and 1/2 hours all the legs were moving and it wouldn't stay put.  Just walk around.

By the time night fell, it was just walking around in the same 10 square foot area on the patio by the hot tub.

The next morning, I went out and searched and it wasn't there.  But after watering the plant hanging by the hot tub, I heard a deep sounding insect wings fluttering in the grass.  And there it was trying to fly out of the grass about 10 feet from the patio.

I grabbed a rope and it climbed out of the grass on to the rope.  I lifted it up to about my waist level.  It attempted to fly, and I encouraged it "Go! Go little guy!  Go!"

After about five feet of flying parallel to the ground about 3 feet up, it then was able to get some thrust and flew upwards around the tree, and then landed way up high about 25 feet up into the tree.  This thing may actually make it!  Way to go little buddy.  Sorry your swim experience ended so badly, and that you were able to cough up the water and get back to living.
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Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Snail's perspective

So today after my table tennis practice with Bruce Majors at Farmington Gym, I noticed TWO snails on top of my car.  One at the top of my windshield, and another on the roof.  How in the heck did they get there?  The place at that time isn't bustling with prank playing teens or anything, so I don't think someone put them up there.


They had to get there on their own, but how?  They would have to climb the tire, then over from the axel up the wheel well and over to get on top of the frame.  Crazy!  I thought to myself should I just smash them against the pavement like I normally do to snails?  I decided I'd see if they could handle a freeway speed ride to my Mom's house where I'd take a shower from the table tennis beating I took from Bruce.

After riding the 2 minutes to the freeway, I noticed that the snail that was at the top of my windshield had veered to his right and was coming down my driver's side window.  He didn't even look like he was struggling to hold on due to the wind generated from the speed of the car.



Crazy!  Once I got to I-215 and went under the 2200 North overpass the sun had finally hit my car for the first time in the day.  Within just a second, I heard some rattling on my roof where I expected it to be the snail that was on my roof.  I looked over and saw the snail on my window start to go into his shell, and lose most of the contact he was making with the window and he was sliding.  He fell off just a few seconds later.

The distance they traveled in those 12 minutes was 15 miles.  So let's put those numbers into perspective:

Snail height: 2 inches
My height: 6 feet

So that means it takes 36 snails to match my height if they stood up on each other's shoulders.

1 mile for me is 880 body lengths.  The snail has 36 body lengths to match me, which means that if I were the size of a snail, one mile would seem like 31,680 miles.

So travelling 12 miles at that size would be 475,200 miles!  That's the distance to the moon and back!

Then consider the speed covered in that time:

475,200/12 minutes = 39,600 miles per minute = 2,376,000 miles per hour.  That's Mach 3,096!

So let's get this straight, those snails held on to my car at over 2.3 million miles per hour, for 12 minutes going a distance equivalent to the moon and back?  All while holding their house on their backs.

That's actually pretty scary how strong they are. All the more reason to crunch them and ensure they don't take over the earth.


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