What Insect Predator Turns Prey into Taxidermy?


Here is a mystery to test your wildlife knowledge.

I was out quail hunting Saturday and noticed something odd about a barbed-wire fence I was getting ready to cross. A 20-foot section of the fence looked like a macabre display of hunting trophies: An entire row of mostly Boone and Crockett-sized grasshoppers were impaled on the barbs of the wire—frozen in their death throes. It was like Vlad the Impaler writ small, but no less merciless.

Can you guess what animal did this? I'll give you a hint: this is one from the "Thank Goodness They're Smaller Than Us, Or We'd Be Lunch" files.