We saw Cow Killer Ants (Velvet Ants) very near these little ant hills... or at least we thought they were ant hills... but when we knocked a few over, there were no ants.
Then Paul got buzzed by a giant wasp that was carrying a cicada. I knew there were wasps that preyed on cicadas, but I did not know they actually carried the things around while they flew!
The wasp dropped the cicada which was freshly paralyzed. It was only later, after Googling, that I learned that the little "ant hills" we had seen earlier were actually where the Cicada Killer wasps had dug a burrow into which they then dragged one or more paralyzed cicadas which are then used to supply their pupae with food as they matured.
As for the Velvet "Cow Killer" Ants we had seen earlier, they, in turn, were predating on the Cicada Killer pupae!
Bottom line: while we were not doing a lot of catching in the field, a great deal of hunting and dying was going on all around us!
For the record, the top two pictures were lifted from the Internet; the bottom picture I took in the field with the iPhone.
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