Two totally unrelated animals today, a velvet ant and a young male elk.
If you live north of Yellowstone you might have seen 2 photos of an elk last week in the “Livingston Enterprise” newspaper. It was a young male who had gotten his antlers caught in someone’s hammock in Gardiner. Yellowstone animal management guys came and tranquilized the elk and cut the hammock to let him loose.
Well this guy must be trouble because a couple of days later he got tangled up in the plastic mesh people use to protect their flowers from elk and deer eating them. In this case I don’t think the mesh worked very well. It didn’t seem to bother him at all.
The photo above reminds me of the bashful bride hiding behind her veil. Maybe he thinks it will help him get some girl.
I was pretty surprised to find this velvet ant along the bank of the Yellowstone River. There are lots of species of velvet ants and they are found in many areas of North America but they are more common in the dry, sandy southeast. Velvet ants aren’t really ants. They are wasps.
I have never been stung by one but they are supposed to be quite painful. I hate to admit this but only the females sting because they are the only ones that have a stinger, which is really an ovipositor. Ovipositors are what many female insect use to deposit their eggs. Velvet ant females deposit their eggs next to the larva or pupa of ground nesting insects especially bumblebees. When the velvet ant egg hatches it eats the larva or pupa. Not nice I guess but a handy source of food for the velvet ant babies.
Our photos are available at www.vernelehmberg.com. Watch for an upcoming sale soon.
Oh, just looked at your pic again and he does have a tag – it says 9! Wonder what that means – if he has been in trouble. Or maybe he was the one that they had to capture in Gardiner. Maybe he has been taking lessons from Touchdown.
He definitely has been in trouble. On Sept 10, 2014 he got caught in an hammock at someone’s house in Gardiner. Kerry Gunther and crew came and tranquilized him and cut the hammock to free him. They thought he was using the hammock to rub his velvet off. I know it is the same elk because I looked at the Livingston Enterprise photos and compared them to ours. If you look closely at the tag you will see another one under it. The other one as some handwritten stuff on it that I am guessing is the date he was tranquilized. Several people have noted the netting is not as attached as it was. All he would have to do is drag that antler through the grass in the right direction and I think it would come off. When we took the photos he had at least 6 girls. I’m telling you the netting works! It is a chick, er cow, magnet!
So, I wonder if that means that he is now #9? He is so young – it is amazing he has girls. If he does not get killed he is going to be a force for sure. But, I have heard that the hunters take the spikes too. Such a shame because they are killing off the healthy future.
I saw him yesterday and he only had it on one antler. Maybe he will get it off himself. I have heard a number of people talking about him so someone in the Park Service has to know.
Did he have an orange tag on when you saw him? I saw him yesterday and he actually had a girl. The mesh was still on but looked like it might come off. Wonder why they tagged him?
That poor guy! I hope that they can get that off of him. Those ants are crazy looking!