Hi guys. Your assignment for the day, should you decide to accept it, is to take
a gander at this bug and see if you can identify it to the (ideally) species level.
If not species, genus will do.
I will be forever grateful to anyone who can help me out.
I’ve looked high and low on the web - the trouble being,
I don’t know if this is a wasp, or a fly, or what. Thanks!
Nick
I’m guessing wasp myself. It’s really tiny, right?
Looks like a Sawlfy (Order Hymenoptera) but would need to see more detail (genitalia, tarsii, etc.) to bring it down to family and genus.
Sawfly, I mean. It is a type of wasp.
That thing sticking out the back seems way too big to be a stinger. Is it an ovipositor?
Judging by the configuration of the thorax (triangular pronotum, extending to wing joint) presence of ovipositor, lack of stinger, threadlike antennea, etc. I would say that this is a member of the Ichneumonidae family, order Hymenoptera
It might be this littleguy but the abdomen seems too narrow
HYMENOPTERA: ICHNEUMONIDAE
Yup. It’s one of those, I think. But I looked at dozens of them at this site: Insects of Cedar Creek
and I can’t seem to match it with anything. DAMMIT.
I looked at every single bug on that page and I saw nothing that I would say matches. I think the closest I can hope to get is the family name. I will leave the rest to someone with far more patience 
It occurs to me that I have just spent the past hour trying to identify a bug that I will probably never ever see again in my life. It also occurs to me that it was the most interesting hour I have spent in quite sometime. I am such a geek!
Yeah, I was afraid of that. Well, thanks for your help, all.
Maybe Cecil will take pity on a poor amateur entomologist…