One of Buck Owens' signature songs that never failed to please his fan base was "I Got a Tiger by the Tail."

The Country-Hall-of-Fame singer, who died in 2006 at age 76, said the lyrics came to him after he noticed a gas station sign advertising "Put a tiger in your tank." (Source: Wikipedia)

"I've got a tiger by the tail, it's plain to see," sang Buck Owens. "I won't be much when you get through with me..."

Well, he's not the only one with a "tiger by the tail."

We recently spotted male longhorn bees, probably Melissodes agilis, targeting Western tiger swallowtails, Papilio rutulus,  in our family's pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. The butterflies were trying to sip nectar from the 8 to 10-foot-high Mexican sunflowers (genus Tithonia).

Who knew that sipping nectar could be so difficult? The extremely territorial male longhorn bees kept trying to push the "tigers" off the Tithonia by dive-bombing them, slamming into them, and then regrouping for more aerial assaults. Their goal: to save the resources for their own species.

And then it happened. A longhorn bee slid through a tiger's tail. 

A tiger by the tail.