What a wonderful saga of the "dark-bodied, reddish-winged, wasp-like
parasitic Ichneumonoid(?) fly!" It reminds me of one of my early
experiences as a close-up observer of nature. (I didn't come to nature
appreciation until adulthood, after I started birding. Birding brought
the natural world to life for me.) After having been out of town a
couple of days (we lived in Texas at the time), I found some larvae in
the bird bath and decided to try to see what they adults would be. I
put them in a jar on my desk and waited to see wait happened. I could
see two types of swimming critters, and wondered if it was different
stages of the same creature, or what. It turned out that yes, I had
both pupae and larvae, and both were active. A few days later I had a
nice family of -- mosquitoes buzzing about in the jar on my desk.
Kristi Streiffert
Coulee Dam, WA