I was butterfly hunting with my camera, and just a bit miffed at losing a Duskywing that flew faster than I could follow, when I noticed this skipper apparently hanging under a Spanish Needles flower. It clearly wasn't nectaring. I went over to see what it was doing.

I couldn't tell at a glance what was happening, so I picked the flower to have a closer look.

Do you see the ambush bug?

The ambush bug had the skipper impaled on its proboscis.

I emailed Tim Adams some of these pictures because he's been kind enough to help me ID some of my more difficult butterflies.

I didn't get ID worthy photos, so he can't be sure, but he said it might be a Ocola Skipper Butterfly.

He's a butterfly expert, and I'm a butterfly gardener, so it sounds absurd to say I checked his ID, but I did check sites I've found to be accurate to make sure that it could be an Ocola Skipper before I posted that info here, and it sure looks like one to me. It's a LOT faster to look up a skipper butterfly by its name than to look at photos of every species of skipper that lives in my area to find the similar ones! Thanks again Tim!

Now if I could just photograph a live one... (Update - got one!)

I carried the picked Spanish Needles flower, bugs and all, to my car, put it on a tissue, and drove home. The ambush bug just kept on eating.

Then I taped the flower to the wall on the porch where the sunlight was bright, and watched for a while. The ambush bug held the full weight of the butterfly. That's one strong little bug!

The bug just kept on eating while I moved the flower around to take these pictures.

Since the butterfly was dead, after I took these photos I removed the ambush bug and tried to get better pictures of the top of the butterflies wings to help me ID it.

I'll spare you the next hour of frustration I experienced... pins, tape, glue... There wasn't much left to photograph when I got done.

There is an art to pinning out a butterfly to photograph it, and I obviously have no idea where to start. I'll look that up before I try it again (if nature provides me another specimen to try it on.)

Ambush Bugs are really creepy! They remind me of the aliens in some old horror movie.

They inject the butterfly with a toxin to keep it still and kill it. The stuff they inject also dissolves the inside of the butterfly so they can slurp it back out as their dinner.

This ambush bug started dinner, but it did not get to finish it, or move on to feast on any other butterflies in my area.