Critters, critters, and more critters

Phil and I have discovered that Oklahoma has crazy bugs and other critters in very abundant quantities. Just this past week I was stung by what I'm pretty sure was a yellow jacket. It came out of nowhere as I was reaching out of the car to get the mail out of the box. I wasn't sure if it was a wasp or what. Then a neighbor mentioned that if something comes right up to you and stings you it was probably a yellow jacket. Apparently they are very aggressive. The next morning Phil called me to tell me he saw them pouring out of the stones around the mailbox. Later that morning I may have been spotted standing in the middle the road emptying a spray can of wasp spray onto the mailbox.  That sting was so painful and caused my arm to swell and itch for the rest of the week!


Here are just a few of our other recent encounters.

Harmless "little" snake

You can see he recently ate something!

Snakes don't bother me nearly as much as they do some people. We were sitting on the patio when we discovered this one lounging on the other side of the grill. If you know Phil very well you know he's not going to kill anything unless it's a true threat. He chased this one out to the front yard with his golf club and was horrified when it crawled into the stones on the front of the house. He waited out there forever for it to come out. He said he was going to chase it away when it came out.

Another harmless "little" creature. Seriously these spiders are giant. Their leg span is probably about as big as my palm. Phil just happended to be in Kansas City for the weekend when I discovered this one and it's very full egg sac on the back of the house. I had to put my big girl pants on and take care of it myself. First I went with the bug spray and this thing looked at me like I just sprayed sugar water on it. When all else fails find a really big shoe, take aim, and hope for the best.

We discovered these in our yard last summer and were absolutely amazed by them. Their called velvet ants and supposedly the sting is extremely painful. They are quite fond of our lantana so we have a few in the backyard again this year. The female (pictured here) doesn't have wings but she can sting. The male can fly but supposedly can't sting. Their shell is fuzzy looking but is hard as a rock. If you step on them they just keep on moving.

Last but not least is the Ground Dwelling Wasp, also known as a cicada killer. We thought we were seeing some really big hornets around the yard, then I had this little encounter with one on the patio. I saw one crawling with a cicada hooked to it. I went with the shoe weapon and basically knocked it in half. The top part is the wasp and the bottom is the cicada. After this we noticed little piles of dirt surrounding the swingset and in various places in the yard. These wasps live in little tunnels in the ground. We've had Terminix out to spray but it didn't help much. As of right now we can't go in the backyard unless we're armed with a tennis racket. Good thing they only have a one month life cycle, but supposedly their babies will be back to the same place next year.