Cicada wasp

[Quillback]

Took a stroll over to the garden this morning, I'm standing there checking things out, when I hear a loud buzz near my feet, look down and there is a cicada wasp carrying a cicada (I call them locusts).  Well I went back into the house to get my camera to take a pic, but darn thing was gone by the time I got back out.  There was a small hole in the dirt near where I saw the wasp, so I bet it is where it went to bury the cicada and inject an egg into it.

Sure was a coincidence seeing it, just read an article in the paper this weekend about them, I had never seen one of those wasps before, and a couple of days later, there it was.  

http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/10-facts-about-cicada-killer-wasps/

[moguy1973]

I took my daughter to a birthday party a couple weeks ago and it was in a back yard.  Heard a cicada really close and it was buzzing super loud and non-stop.  Then it buzzed right by us and landed in a little flower garden right next to us.  Looked down and there was one of those attached to it stinging the crap out of it.  I thought it was a hornet but looking at those pictures it was definitely a cicada killer wasp.   It didn't grab the cicada though, it just left it in the flower garden and about 20 minutes later it was literally covered with ants that were chowing down on it.

[Terrierman]

They are really big and really scary looking.  I collected one for my H.S. Biology insect collection  (what a memory!). They can have all the cicadas they want if you ask me.