A few years back, I caught some footage of a tarantula hawk wasp harassing a large desert tarantula. The wasps use paralyzed spiders as hosts for their larval young, which feed on the still-living spiders, carefully devouring around essential organs what would kill their arachnid hosts. Creepy stuff.

In this video, the spider gets away. I know the wasp’s horror-show life cycle is natural. It’s a unique and, in its wickedness, incredible example of evolution’s finesse. But I like tarantulas and I’m glad I didn’t see it get killed.

Most of the tarantula hawk wasps in Arizona have copper colored wings. While there are several species, Pepsis thisbe is the most common. Because the female in the video has black wings, she is most likely Pepsis Mexicana. Tarantula hawks allegedly deliver the second most painful sting in the world.

With the pandemic and the heat keeping me indoors more these days, I’ve been learning my way around video editing programs and DAWs, which are music production and editing programs. As I’m new to these applications, I’ve gone the free route and opted for DaVinci Resolve and Cakewalk, both of which can do some amazing things. Perhaps once I get the hang of things, or find a professional application for video/audio editing, I’ll upgrade to more sophisticated programs. In any case, I composed the music for both videos here and recorded a song for a friend’s upcoming project. It feels good to work on music again and exciting to do some multimedia projects.

I have some more quirky, lo-fi videos on my YouTube channel. Lots of nature and synthesizers.