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Velvet Ants

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published October 17, 2016 at 9:00 AM EDT

Boys are impressionable creatures. They hone in on pronouncements that combine adventure and danger. Such was my experience many years ago when I was warned by elders to avoid at all costs an insect with the moniker "cow killer." How could such a beast in our midst not be a call to action? It was claimed that the sting was so terrible that it could dispatch a healthy cow. I set out to catch one in a Mason jar.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley