While she was thus employed the spider was attacked by a very tiny red ant, that could not by any possibility have stirred it. When the wasp caught sight of this insignificant marauder she fell into a fit of wild fury, and bending her abdomen under, seized the ant again and again in her mandibles, and flung it backward against the tip of her sting. The little creature finally escaped, seeming none the worse for the rough handling to which it had been subjected, while the wasp, still trembling with excitement, grasped her spider and rushed off to a distance of several feet, carrying it up on a weed and depositing it there. The labor of excavation was then resumed, and after a half–hour’s work the nest was completed to her satisfaction. Coming up head first, she flattened herself out on the ground, and sprawling thus, dragged herself all around it. The spider was now brought to the nest, being left once on the way while she ran in and out again, and was taken in after a new and original fashion. Backing in herself, she seized it by the tip of the abdomen and dragged it down without any trouble, since the legs were gently pushed up over the head and made no resistance. In two minutes she emerged from the opening, and standing on the four posterior legs, with her abdomen hanging down into the hole, scratched the earth backward with the front legs and mandibles. As it fell in she pushed it down with the abdomen, and as the hole filled she raised herself higher and higher on her legs, still using the tip of the abdomen to work the material into place.