I am sitting out just before dark, watching our bird dog, who is unhappily sporting a cone to keep her from licking a hot spot on her paw. Here she is a few hours ago.
Catching up with PF on my iPad, I catch movement and go and investigate what looks like a large tarantula. Then I realize something is dragging the tarantula.
Turns out it is a tarantula hawk, which is a crazy effective predator, and how it operates is worth a quick read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk
snippet:
A tarantula hawk is a spider wasp (Pompilidae) that hunts tarantulas. Tarantula hawks belong to any of the many species in the genera Pepsis and Hemipepsis. They are parasitoid wasps, using their sting to paralyze their prey before dragging it to a brood nest as living food; a single egg is laid on the prey, hatching to a larva which eats the still-living prey.