As I mentioned in class, the story of the ichneumon in Dillard's Fecundity hit me in the gut. The idea of a child eating a mother from the inside out . . . not the sort of image you can easily escape. So, out of a sick fascination and also as a means of de-anthropomorphizing the ichneumon, I did a little poking around on Wikipedia. Besides learning that the word ichneumon also refers to a medieval mongoose-like monster that was known for killing dragons (oh the wonders of hypertext), I also found out that the ichneumon wasp (which Dillard was referring to) can grow to be five inches long.
In other words, the ichneumon wasp is a gigantic bug so mean it will eat its own mother given the chance. My fears continued to not be assuaged. Wikipedia went on to try a different tack. It told me that while the wasp has an "extremely long ovipositor . . . the ovipositor does not deliver a sting like many wasps or bees."
. . . No, the ovipositor is only used to lay a shitload of eggs that grow into wasps that "will eat any body in which they find themselves," as Dillard warns. I am now half-planning a horror franchise based on gigantic ichneumons. I figure it can't be worse than Eight Legged Freaks.
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