Eeuwww! A bug!

Yesterday I was out on the back verandah trying to take photos of birds when a big orange and black wasp buzzed past my head, seemingly on a mission.  I followed him back to our table and saw that he was busily adding more layers to a nest that had been built on my husband's fishing tackle box. You can see the wet patches where he's added more mud

How does a wasp get mud, you ask? Well, apparently, they use spit - it's pretty gross, really!

Later I decided that I had best knock this nest off before we ended up with 1000s of baby wasps. I jumped about six miles when my first blow uncovered a whole host of baby critters inside already! Yucky

After backing off to retrieve my courage, I carefully carried the box to the end of the patio and dropped it from a great height. This scattered the little guys everywhere and it turns out there were a variety of life stages in the single nest. From caterpillars

to this squirmy larvae and alien looking husk...I'm not sure but that might be a caterpillar-stage guy creeping out of the middle!

There are no creepy crawlies left today so I assume that they have either crawled into one of the pot plants or that the birds have made a meal. I have discovered another two nests but I'm not game to break them...good thing hubby gets home later today!