Ewwwww

I was out in the garden on Friday and spotted this little dude.

Ewwwww.  Caterpillar thingy?  What is wrong with you!  What's with all the weird little cotton puffball things coming off your back?!

But I let him be.  Today I went back and caterpillar thingy looks like this:

Ewwwww-er.  What in the?!?  From what I can tell the little white cotton puffballs sucked caterpillar dry.  Gerrrrroooooossssss.

I came inside and was thinking I should probably nicely ask a boy to come over and kill the gross caterpillar parasite things so I didn't have to touch it but I wanted to figure out what those disgusting little vampiric buggers were.  Well, good thing I did!  Turns out the pretty green caterpillar (rest in peace) was a tomato hornworm larva and the vampiric buggers are trichogramma wasps.  "Nooo!  No wasps!! I've already got mosquitoes all over my garden!"  Well, turns out these wasps are listed as a beneficial parasite in my garden book.  They're too small to sting people and apparently are so small we usually don't even see them (1/100 to 1/25 of an inch).  They feed on the eggs of insects that are plant eaters but don't harm the actual plants.

So I guess I shouldn't kill the gross little suckers.  Dern.