So, yesterday, a friend of mine visited for a bonfire, and he asked me to come look at something weird on his car. In the seam of the door, there were 4 little mud cocoons. I crumbled the first one on accident (it was empty), but the second one came off cleanly- but it was empty, too. I took a photo of them to see if I could get an ID later, and then I pulled off the third one- empty.
The 4th one though. The 4th one… something had Happened.
It looks like a spider, but I couldn’t think of any spider that would live in our area that makes cocoons like this, and the cocoon really looked like something a wasp or a bee would do, so I was stumped!
TURNS OUT. Michigan has a really beautiful little wasp called a blue mud dauber, and their MO is to sting spiders, shove them into mud cocoons, lay an egg on it, and close the lid.
(source)
But the REAL kicker here, is that their FAVORITE spider, the one they are most well known for using…. is the black widow. These docile little nectar-eaters know how to snatch them right out of their webs or lure them off of their webs in order to sting them to use as baby food. So NOT ONLY are these things Friends, and beautiful as heck, but they are complete badasses too. I have seen them around here and there over the years, but I never thought to wonder what they might be doing. I’m glad to find out!
