Ever want something really bad? Maybe too bad? It appears to be love — the idea of it certainly tastes, focuses and resonates like love — but the craving of it is more than hunger: it’s desperation. Desperation is a bad decision-maker, but it is hard to negotiate while the void in my gut is driving me…cuckoo. The worst part of being on the brink of cuckooery is that it usually rests in close proximity to the apparent remedy. I can see it right now — whether it is love or companionship or sex or purpose or whatever — a very specific opportunity is so close, yet…
…maybe not there at all. I don’t want to fool myself, mistaking desperation for a moment of truth. I guess I can just make myself nuts thinking about a chance or I can look for my next shot. Which leads me to the little wasp featured in this post. I was pleased to get these photos of a cold, somewhat lethargic cuckoo wasp (Family Chrysididae) in October. This particular individual was a beautiful iridescent blue-green, and unlike the the other cuckoos I’ve encountered, placid enough to get some decent shots.
The family of these wasps gets its common name because some members are cleptoparasites, i.e. they steal food of a host organism, which is somewhat similar to the strategy of the eponymous bird. It amazes me what a mad, mad world it is. The infinite interlocking tendrils of life and the infinitesimal tendrils of the matter beneath it are endless. So I am just going to go on, likewise, until I get wherever I’m going; cuckoo, wasp or otherwise.
I’ve got crazy in my hands...
BugPhoto.net 
Two questions:
1) Is “cuckooery” really a word?
2) How often are you able to get a subject to camp out on your hand? I gotta guess it’s much more common for them to take off once you’re anywhere near them.
1) Why, yes it is. Yes it is.
2) It is more common for a bug to just fly off, for sure. I guess flies do no really volunteer to go on the hand. Jumping spiders occasionally will (I think out of professional curiosity); same for moths and butterflies, I guess. Bees and wasp, especially in the cold (human hands are warm) will wander on; that’s probably what happened here. I don’t know what it is, but typically the bees and wasps are somewhat less worried about me than other bugs. The hubris of a stinging life?
It is not necessarily an ideal pose; one less hand can make it trickier to shoot — especially if it’s the right hand (haven’t put in for a lefty shutter-release camera yet).