I know where the bodies are buried

All right already, I confess. Yes, I know where the bodies are buried. PLENTY of bodies. LOADS of bodies. That’s because there are hundreds if not thousands of them entombed in my garage. These are not actually dead bodies, but rather walking-dead zombies destined to meet their end by being eaten alive. This horror show would be front page news under other circumstances, namely if these victims were human and a Jeffrey Dahmer type villain were the deranged killer. No, the bodies that litter the walls of my garage (and perhaps yours as well)are those of unlucky spiders. The perpetrator? A cleverly murderous wasp -- the ubiquitous, industrious, and very determined mud dauber.

I’m not certain how many daubers are involved in the crypt-building projects that adorn the interior walls of my garage with so many mud-ufactured spider-packed sepulchers. But the cylindrical nature of the construction indicates that these are the work of organ-pipe mud daubers, so named because their nests resemble miniature organ pipes. So why do daubers dabble in such death and destruction? It’s one of the natural world’s more bizarre designs to perpetuate this species of insect. It’s been said that Mother Nature is a cruel mistress, but this seems a particularly brutal circle of life, especially if the predator wasp’s life cycle is seen through the eyes of the prey species, primarily spiders and a few small insects.

Unlike honey bees, yellow jackets, hornets and even paper wasps, daubers are not social insects. They lead solitary lives. And unlike bees, hornets, and especially yellow jackets, daubers are reluctant to sting people, saving their paralytic venom for their arachnid victims. Once a spider is captured and incapacitated, it is placed in a cell or chamber within the organ-pipe cylinder. The wasp then lays a single egg on the body, adding as many as twentyfive more spiders before sealing the chamber with a mandible full of fresh mud. A single cylinder might contain a dozen or more such chambers.

Incidentally, in terms of division of labor, it’s the female dauber that does all the work assembling these mud structures and capturing spiders. Meanwhile the male just hangs out feeding on nectar and making himself available for mating. Since these wasps pose no danger to humans, they are not really considered insect “pests.” The only problem they cause for people is an aesthetic one, smearing the walls of buildings with their unsightly and grubby mud sculptures. Maybe if I ever bothered to close my garage doors this would be less of a concern at our house.

The organ-pipe species of mud dauber, that’s Sceliphron caementarium to you Latin buffs, prefers the types of spiders that are web builders. Once the tubular chamber is packed with spiders and sealed, the egg hatches. Then the hungry larva chows down on the first spider, consuming it in its entirety. After the remaining spiders in the cell are also consumed, the larva pupates and eventually emerges from the nest as an adult wasp.

This week I scraped one of the nests from the garage wall and cracked it open like a perverse piñata. Sure enough, a cache of stupefied spiders came tumbling out. As per the dauber drill, they were not dead but very much alive, dazed and disoriented from the dauber’s paralytic sting. They still managed to tremulously twitch and feebly flail a few of their eight arthropod legs, but they sure weren’t going anywhere despite the fact that I’d freed them from their muddy mausoleum. The paralysis caused by the dauber’s venom is permanent, and although I had spared these half-dozen arachnids the horror of being eaten alive by wasp larvae, they would never recover and were ultimately doomed.

The timeline for all of this drama begins when the larva hatches from the egg in one to four days after being laid and immediately begins feasting on the paralyzed spider buffet. Once the entire buffet is consumed in one to three weeks, the larva pupates; however, the pre-pupal stage may go into hibernation (diapause) over the winter months depending on outside temperatures. In any case, once the newborn wasp emerges from the nest, it can look forward to a lifespan of just three to six weeks, a span of time when the females once again get busy building nests and tracking down and stashing ill-fated spiders. And as likely as not, they’ll end up in our garage.

WOMEN IN THE WILD

The West Caln Sportsmen’s Club at 1271 Telegraph Road in Coatesville is hosting its annual Women in the Wild event on Saturday, August 10, 2019 from 8:00 am – 3:30 pm (rain or shine). The one day event is for women ages 18 and over who may choose from eight different classes designed for beginners that include archery, orienteering, shooting, self-defense, and more. No prior knowledge or equipment is needed. Pre-registration is $45.00 per person ($55.00 on-site registration fee, space not guaranteed) and includes a continental breakfast, up to four sessions and a catered lunch. A dozen or so vendors will be on hand offering local products and services. This year a mother/ daughter discount is available during pre-registration. Visit the Women in the Wild website at www.sites.google.com/view/witw for full session descriptions, list of vendors and registration.

A mud dauber hard at work stashing bodies of spiders into the chambers of its organ-pipe nest.

This distinctive nest that adorns a wall of Tatum’s garage was built by a female organ-pipe mud dauber and contains hundreds of paralyzed spiders.