Garden Pests and Diseases: Friend or Foe #2, 1 by Night_Bloom

Night_Bloom wrote:
margu - most wasps prefer sandy soil, but they will dig in soil with a bit of clay too. If you look carefully at the soil in my picture above, you will notice some usual "Georgia red clay" characteristics despite my tilling. It does however, take them a bit of work - sometimes you'll here them buzzing away as they dig, and they often sound "mad" - hee.

As for your reddish critter - does it look like this? I didn't remember you mentioning hair, but some species of these don't have hair all this hair either. If it does look like your critter, watch out. This is a female velevet ant (family Mutillidae). She is a great wingless wasp predator, but she will sting if handled, and it's a pretty nasty sting from what I've heard.

Besides my picture below, here's a link to pictures of a bunch of different velvet ants - and many of these are not furry... http://bugguide.net/node/view/159/bgimage