Bedroom visitor

Last night, we were visted by (what I think is) a Pompilidae wasp.

We see these wasps fairly regularly dragging huge spiders across our garden – it amazing to watch. At first I though the spiders were dead, but not so – just paralysed.  Here’s the story:

Spider wasps are long-legged, solitary wasps that use a single spider as a host for feeding their larvae. They paralyze the spider with a venomous stinger. Once paralyzed, the spider is dragged to where a nest will be built – some wasps having already made a nest.
 
A single egg is laid on the abdomen of the spider, and the nest – or burrow – is closed. The size of the host can influence whether the wasp will lay an egg that will develop as a male, or an egg that will develop into a female – larger prey yielding the (larger) females.

When the wasp larva hatches it begins to feed on the still-living spider. After consuming the edible parts of the spider, the larva spins a silk cocoon and pupates – usually emerging as an adult the next summer. Some ceropalines lay the egg on a still-active spider, where it feeds externally on hemolymph.

In time, that spider will die, and the mature wasp larva will then pupate.

Niiiice!
Fortunately, I didn’t need any stinging to knock me out last night. Heat and exhaustion did the trick.

Power cut

Just a quick quota photo effort from me this evening.

We had a power cut at work this afternoon which left all of us playing catch up – due to a fault at the Koeberg Switching Station, apparently. Someone evidently switched it off.
 
Add to that the oppressive heat (43°C when I left work), the need to swim lots and a wonderful Porterhouse Steak braai, couple them up to a teething daughter and what do you get?

A quota photo of my collegue trying to look cool in the doorway of the darkened lab, that’s what.
The photo, like this post, was quick and dirty.

The power cut continued at least as long is it took the residual effect of the air-con to give up, at which point and we went home to sweat there instead.

Tomorrow we are promised a far more reasonable (chilly, even) 22°C.

Tickets please!

How exciting – look what I got in the post last night:

Two of them, in fact.

Now there’s just a couple of flights to organise, a reasonably priced hotel room in Oslo (is there such a thing?) and a couch here and there in the UK.
Oh, and if you’re reading this, Mr Carter – as you should be – you’re proving rather difficult to get hold of!

Snow-ta Photo

I’m watching Tranmere v Wolves in the FA Cup (and currently Tranmere are all over the visitors like an aggressive gravy) so I’m giving you a snow-ta photo.
It’s like a quota photo, but with snow (see what I did there?).

This is one my Dad took on New Year’s Eve. Beautiful.
My parents arrived back home on 10th December from a 6 week tour of  Australia. It was 3°C in Sheffield that day and it hasn’t got that warm again since. The forecast until Friday gives a daily maximum of 0°C or below.

Happy days.

Hello 2010

I was busy braai’ing as the sun set on 2009 and – thanks to a couple of wonderful, near-textbook examples of the always enjoyable pavor nocturnus – I was busy playing catch-up on my sleep as it rose again on 2010.
Fortunately, there are a band of willing photographers who don’t seem to require quite as much red meat or slumber as I do. One of those is Joy-Anne Goodenough, whose work has previously graced the pixels of 6000 miles… twice before: here and more notably here, with a couple of shots from the last light of 2008.

Well, this is Joy-Anne’s photograph “Sunrise from Red Hill, New Years Day 2o1o” which pretty much tells you the what, where and when of things and saves me from having to do the same.

Incidentally (and neatly completing the circle) Joy-Anne was out and about on New Year’s Eve as well, capturing the very last light of 2009 (and here) and (of course) they’re damn good; but I remain a huge fan of her 2008 efforts.