TYENCE!

Throughout our travels across this beautiful nation we inevitably have run across an abundance of wildlife, whether it be insects, plants, or dog-based critters.  I myself am very fond of discovering new types of plant and animal life, I enjoy taking pictures of them and reading about them and basically being a bona fide geek.

I call this section of the blog: TYENCE.  For the kick-off TYENCE edition I'm going to cover a few different weird bugs I've run across in the passed few years.

I'll start with one of the insects I found most interesting, the Velvet Wasp or Velvet Ant as it is referred to occasionally.

I stumbled upon one of these at a campground in North Carolina.  I had never encountered one of these insects before and it was quite a sight.  It's a terrific bright red color and looks like a giant ant, the size of a large wasp.  The female Velvet Wasp does not have wings while the male does.  There are roughly 3-5,000 species of this insect and it typically lives in very warm, dry, sandy climates.  Most commonly it is found in the Southwest in North America, but apparently there was at least one in North Carolina.  So I came across a female and fortunately I did not attempt to pick it up, apparently it has a devastating sting and is even nick-named the "Cow Killer".  Yikes.  Here's some footage of its stinger.



Another of my favorite rare insects to stumble upon is the Praying Mantis.  Hands down, in my opinion, the Mantis is THE coolest.  How bad-ass is a Praying Mantis?  The answer is very.  And how ambiguous is its name?  Is it "Preying" or "Praying".  They are both applicable and sound exactly the same.  Whoa.  The Mantis is somewhat elusive in the States, at least I have very rarely stumbled upon them.  There are about 20 species that are native to the U.S. and two (the Chinese Mantis and European Mantis) were introduced specifically to control unwanted pests that were damaging crops.  So the Mantis is like the Enforcer.  Totally bad-ass.

Here is one I encountered a few years ago in Atlanta.  It happened to land directly on my shoe and remained for a few minutes just hanging out.

I also came across a little baby mantis a few weeks ago at the studio.  Never seen one quite so small and adorable.

So there you have it.  The first edition of TYENCE evah!  Hope you enjoyed it and I apologize if you are creeped out by bugs 'n at, but hey, it's not that serious.  Really this is just a chance for me to post some goofy photos.  Anyway.  Don't forget we've got the Viper Room show next Monday, August 13th, it will be a kickoff party for the Sunset Strip Music Festival and it is guaranteed to be a hell of a show.  Hope to see you all there!  Facebook event page


P.S.  The link to Alex Kelly's website in my last blog post was not current, so in case you did or did not visit his site, here's the site I strongly encourage you to visit: www.harvardink.com.  He's got a kick-ass post about a reupholstery project he's doing, great stuff.

Til next time,

Ty