Through an odd tradition, most of the time a fluorescent light stays on above the counter at the picture window in my kitchen. At some point in the summer, I finally have to turn the light off--that point is when I wake up in the morning and the counter is totally covered with dead bugs (I have no idea why they die overnight...). The carnage is sad and disgusting. But the bugs are just incredible. In fact, the bugs at our place are just incredible in general. I am certain there are insect species on my kitchen counter that have never been seen by humans before.

No bug, however, has been more fascinating than the one a friend of mine spotted at the New Hampshire Farm Museum last weekend. She was checking out the raised bed herb gardens when she noticed this phenomenal insect. We took several pictures of it and were determined to find someone to ID it for us.

Coincidentally, my friend works in the Natural Resources Department at UNH where there happens to be at least one resident entomologist. I thought sure we would stump him and was busy checking out how to contact the world-famous entomologist, E.O. Wilson, at Harvard when my email dinged with a message from my UNH friend. Dr. Paul C. Johnson immediately ID'd our "endangered species" as a member of the wasp family Ichneumonidae. He described it as "using its long ovipositor [which, on this specimen, was several times longer than you see in the photo] to bore several inches through solid wood to lay its egg in its host, usually the larva of a wood boring beetle."

First off, www.bugguide.net described Ichneumonidae as common insects with a worldwide range. And that there are about 5,000 described species in North America with perhaps as many as 3,000 more undescribed species. Come on. I've never seen one of these insects in all my 52 years. How can this be?

Secondly, it bores "several inches through solid wood" with its long thin "ovipositor"? Holy crap. I can barely do that with a power drill. 

But no, as if that's not enough for this apparent overachiever, it bores through said wood to lay its egg in a host larva? How on earth does it know there is a larva at the spot where it drills through several inches of solid wood? I'm exhausted just thinking about it all. 

And lastly, how can it have to do all this complicated maneuvering to reproduce but still be one of the more common insects in the world?

I have never been a wasp fan, but these guys have even me fascinated. Go bug.

Cheryl Kimball is a freelance writer/editor living on a 90-acre tree farm in Middleton, NH.