Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 250, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1917 — Mud Hornet Is More Than A Match for the Spider; Captures Victim by Trick [ARTICLE]

Mud Hornet Is More Than A Match for the Spider; Captures Victim by Trick

I once saw, on the porch of ray residence on Lake Hopatcong, a mud hornet deliberately -fall into and entangle herself in a spider web, Hudson Maxim writes in the North American Reviews Tha spider, perching upon an outer corner of the web, instantly sprang at the hornet, then stopped, and decided that it did not want to tackle the hornet, and.returned to its perch. After waiting a while for the spider to come to the attack, the hornet freed herself very easily from the web; and I watched her fly several times in circles and then deliberately alight in another nearby web and entangle herself in it. Instantly the alert spider, evidently either more hungry or less cautious than the other, sprang upon the hornet, when, with an alacrity that would shame the lightning, and with a precision developed beyond the contingency of error, that hornet seized the spider, jabbed her sting into it and paralyzed it.Then she did it up nicely and carried it away. I learned afterward, in the study of insects, that this is the regular habit of the mud hornet —that she catches spiders in this manner, paralyzing them with her sting. She places them one after another in a mud pocket that she has constructed for the purpose, until she has enough canned spiders to feed her young when they hatch out in the spring. The spiders do not die, but remain alive in their prison until attacked by the larvae of the hornet and eaten at the proper time. Rather hard on the spiders — but the habits of the spiders themselves are not such as to elicit much sympathy.