I watched this epic drama unfold the other day. A large, brightly coloured native wasp - a mud-dauber wasp in fact - was dragging an even larger spider - I think it was a black house spider, though I only got a view of the underside - through the front garden, down the steps to the garage, along the floor, and up the wall at the back.
The spider was motionless, though it didn't look dead, damaged, or misshapen in any way.
The mud dauber was no doubt in the process of constructing another cell of a nest. The spider wasn't dead, it had been paralysed by the wasp, and it was to be encased in the mud cell, along with a wasp egg. The egg will hatch, and the larva will feed on the live zombie spider. When it's bigger and stronger, the larva will become a pupa, and eventually an adult wasp will emerge from the nest.
These days I watch these things unfold with interest and admiration. I must admit though, that when I first encountered mud dauber nests on the house walls a few years ago, I just destroyed them without much thought. Here are pictures before and after one of these destructive events. You can see the cocoons containing the pupae, and also the skeletal remains of the eaten-up zombie spiders.
This one has made itself at home in a front yard near us. He built this enormous mound. His mate laid her eggs in it, and he's been tending it for weeks, defending it and rearranging it to keep the incubation temperature exactly right. When the eggs hatch the chicks spend a day or two burrowing upwards and outwards. Then they're off into the world to fend for themselves.
