A couple of days ago this huge, florescent bug was climbing up my office wall. What the heck? Where could it have come from? I didn't think we had holes in the house.
Art Googled it under florescent green wasp and discovered that it is an Emerald Cockroach Wasp.
Got this from Wikipedia:
Art tried to smack it with his slipper but he missed and it went flying around my office and landed behind the bed and promptly disappeared. We hunted all over for it and finally gave up. Art closed all the doors to make sure it didn't go into any of the other rooms and we went to bed.
I'd closed most of my office windows the night before because it often rains at night and I don't want my computer to get wet. When I got up in the morning I saw that the wasp was between the sliding glass window and outside screen. How did it get there? Did it go through the glass? I called Art to look and he was shocked. We should call this the Houdini wasp.
Whatever the case, it died because we didn't want to let it back into the room. It does have a stinger and I have enough welts from bug bites on me.
Now we see that this is a wasp who kills American (Periplaneta americana) cockroaches. Those are the GIANT cockroaches that local writer, Lisa Matsumoto wrote a children's book about called "How the B52 Cockroach Learned to Fly." Now Art is very sorry he had to kill that bug because it was probably keeping the American cockroach population under control in our area. Sigh...
Hopefully Houdini Wasp has some friends who are still around. And hopefully they are outside of the house.
Art Googled it under florescent green wasp and discovered that it is an Emerald Cockroach Wasp.
Got this from Wikipedia:
"The emerald cockroach wasp or jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa) is a solitary wasp of the family Ampulicidae. It is known for its unusual reproductive behavior, which involves stinging a cockroach and using it as a host for its larvae. It thus belongs to the entomophagous parasites."
"A. compressa was introduced to Hawaii by F.X. Williams in 1941 as a method of biocontrol. This has been unsuccessful because of the territorial tendencies of the wasp, and the small scale on which they hunt."
Art tried to smack it with his slipper but he missed and it went flying around my office and landed behind the bed and promptly disappeared. We hunted all over for it and finally gave up. Art closed all the doors to make sure it didn't go into any of the other rooms and we went to bed.
I'd closed most of my office windows the night before because it often rains at night and I don't want my computer to get wet. When I got up in the morning I saw that the wasp was between the sliding glass window and outside screen. How did it get there? Did it go through the glass? I called Art to look and he was shocked. We should call this the Houdini wasp.
Whatever the case, it died because we didn't want to let it back into the room. It does have a stinger and I have enough welts from bug bites on me.
Now we see that this is a wasp who kills American (Periplaneta americana) cockroaches. Those are the GIANT cockroaches that local writer, Lisa Matsumoto wrote a children's book about called "How the B52 Cockroach Learned to Fly." Now Art is very sorry he had to kill that bug because it was probably keeping the American cockroach population under control in our area. Sigh...
Hopefully Houdini Wasp has some friends who are still around. And hopefully they are outside of the house.
