Yay, Parasites!
August 31 My view of parasites is largely informed by letters home from my children's school. "Health notice" in the subject line of an email from the school is the equivalent of unexploded ordinance, right? While I'll probably still dread any mention of lice even after today, I've discovered that there is such thing as a good parasite.
See this guy? This giant green Tomato Hornworm (cool people also know it as the Manduca quinquemaculata) was attempting to chow its way through our Big Girls and Brandywines. Now, see all those white things on it? I thought they were eggs.
They're not eggs, they're the larvae of my new best friend, the Braconid wasp. The wasp larvae are eating the hornworms, helping to guarantee a new phalanx of soldier's for next year's fight, too. Go, little white squirmy parasites!
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