Oh my, it must be Giant Wasp Season.  Hadn't you heard?  I started noticing giant wasps over the weekend.  Not just regular wasps, I'm accustomed to (for example) mud dauber wasps.  I'm talking GIANT wasps, about the size of my pinkie finger, no lie.

The first thing I did was Google these monsters.  I mean, after the part where I ran inside squealing in terror, obviously.  The bad news: there are several kinds of giant wasps you might encounter.  The good news: most of them don't sting.

You wouldn't think so, because many of these gigantic wasps are flying around wielding what sure LOOKS like a huge stinger.  But it is not a stinger - it is an ovipositor, which is what female insects use to deposit their eggs.

In the case of the most common giant wasps in the Pacific Northwest, colloquially known as the "Stump Stabber," this ridiculously long ovipositor is used to reach inside the cracks and crevices of rotten wood.  

Stump stabbers are ichneumon wasps, a category of parasitic wasp with a truly astonishing feeding method.  Ichneumon wasps lay their eggs inside the bodies of the hosts.  The eggs hatch, and eat the host from the inside out.  

FROM.
THE.
INSIDE.
OUT.

In the case of the Stump Stabber, she is feeling around inside the stump for grubs.  Once she encounters one, she pierces it with her long ovipositor and lays her eggs inside it.

One thing the Stu mp Stabber is feeling for is the larvae of the horntail.  

The pigeon horntail is another common sighting in the late fall, and I believe that is the creature that has been terrifying me off and on over the last few weeks.  (I caught a pretty good picture of one this morning - click the above picture for a bigger version.  If you dare.)

The pigeon horntail is a wood-boring wasp, which can cause a tremendous amount of damage to timber stands.  Its larvae spend several years munching their way through wood, emerging as a full-grown wasp up to five years after it was laid as an egg.  The female horntail uses a flagrantly oversized ovipositor, just like the ichneumon wasp.  Also sting-less, the horntail is nevertheless a fearsome sight.

Terrifyingly, five years is just long enough for its host tree to have been cut down, milled into timber beams, and used in home construction.  Stories abound of wasps emerging from newly laid timber beams.  The horntail wasp is harmless to humans, and represents no threat to home structures once it has emerged.  

But I still wouldn't blame those homeowners for setting their house on fire.  It's the most plausible solution.

And so the cycle of gigantic terrifying wasp life is complete.  In this battle of pinkie-sized wasps, we probably ought to side with the scarier one.  The ichneumon wasp's feeding habits may seem cruel in the extreme, but they are a valuable predator on the insect scale.  And think of it this way: they help prevent wasps from emerging from your ceiling beams.