Mud Daubers are the narrow-waisted wasps that leave the annoying tunnels of mud on the side of your house or under eaves.  The tunnels can be unsightly, but they have a hidden surprise.  When the wasp finishes making her tunnel, she lays an egg on a host in the back of the tunnel.  The legless maggot-like larvae will need a food source, so the female wasp stuffs the hole with spiders (before abandoning it forever).   The spiders are paralyzed, but not dead.  According to the Texas A&M website, the iridescent blue mud dauber stuffs their chambers almost exclusively with black widows.

I excavated a mud dauber nest three years ago, and was fascinated to discover that each “tunnel” housed 13-17 paralyzed spiders!  They looked dead, but dead spiders curl up their legs, and these looked all askew, with legs sprawled everywhere!  I went in to get a camera, and when I came back, and an anole (lizard) was just eating the last of the spiders.

A few weeks ago, we had to knock down a mud dauber tunnel in order to move the kayak.  This time I got the camera before knocking it down, and took a picture of the spiders on the ground.  On closer inspection, most appear to be brown widows.

I think, in the future, I will leave the mud daubers to their peculiar parenting style, and hope the larvae hatch into females who can collect as many spiders as possible and stuff them into tunnels.