Today's wildlife drama,

played out beneath my feet—almost literally since they were on the top step outside the back door when I went out to have a cigarette—was a wasp or hornet, all bright black & yellow & the length of the two top joints of my little finger, dragging around a fat-bellied spider not much smaller than itself.

I think the theory is that the hornet/wasp injects, first, some sort of incapacitating agent, then an egg, into the spider, drags it somewhere isolated, begins building a papier-mâché shell attached to a beam or wall, deposits the still live if somewhat comatose spider inside, completes the shell. The wasp/hornet egg goes through its metamorphosis, changes from egg to larva & then to pupa at which point it starts to feed off the spider & grows quite large until it finishes that stage of its life cycle, turns into a horp/wasnet, cracks open the shell & emerges to hunt down a spider.

& frighten the shit out of me!