Parasitoid wasps, which instead of stingers have a needle-sharp ovipositor and deposit their larvae beneath the host’s skin. I’d learned about them in the spring, when my mother brought a monarch cocoon inside for me and it sat, inert, in a little plastic terrarium on my dresser, slowly darkening with black splotches as the wasp ate away inside it. After learning what the splotches meant, my mother shook the cocoon out onto the cement of our driveway and crushed it with her foot. I had wanted to keep it; just long enough to see the wasp come wriggling out.
