I either rescued my cat from this today or, rescued this from my cat (neither bug nor cat injured). From everything I can find it's a bee and a friend with qualifications in the field said after seeing underside images said he believes it's a wild bee based on the leg something or other, a BIG bee around 1.5 inches in length.
Aside from a brief stay in an empty jar and sitting on a light pad with a camera overhead it was returned to the yard uninjured, to sting me another day.
I don't know what it is exactly but I don't want to stand on the thing in the back yard with bare feet (the only kind my son seems to possess and last bee sting is still healing several months after the incident).
Fantastic macro shots Leo. You're a brave man catching that beastie. We get potter wasps here that are fairly harmless and mostly just curious. However, their size makes them pretty intimidating.
Wasps are easy, my last place had tiger snakes, too many tiger snakes, living at the base of a mountain with a creek in front of the house (across the road). I'd use a hoe and move them away from the house. Apparently they are very aggressive snakes but I never had a problem, same implement was also razor sharp but I generally don't like killing things, other than the influx of white tail spiders in the house with all of this rain.
