Ichneumon wasp I start to see these insects in late August, and they always give me a kind of vestigial pause. In fact, I'm not crazy for wasps of any sort—it's a long childhood story—but some unnerve me more than others. This one, Pelecinus polyturator, belongs to the "more unnerve" category. That has to be because of its long, flexible, and, I would have guessed, potently painful stinger-equipped abdomen. Not to worry. P. polyturator, the only member of the genus in North America, packs very little of a wallop—unless you're the grub of a June Bug. The black, shiny, nearly three-inch-long wasp uses that abdomen to probe the ground for likely prey, and when it finds a suitable beetle larva, it pokes it with its ovipositor and lays an egg on the unfortunate grub. Soon, the won't-be June Bug becomes the wasp larva's long dinner. The adults, which are primarily nectar-feeders, are not aggressive towards our species. Even so, I used a telephoto and kept my distance.