Posited

The beauty and the horror are the same,

At least if you’re considering the small

And obscure parasitoid wasps, which work

With ovipositors, not with stingers,

To accomplish their grisly successes

As vivisectionists, placing egg plus

Venom and cooperative viruses

In the flesh of a living host, their yolk.

These are often extremely pretty wasps

And never likely to give you trouble,

But even Darwin found them disturbing

For the dark arts of their reproduction.

Here, we only point them out to suggest

That, of life’s mascots, they’re among the best.