Is There Any Better Proof?

 

It was October 3 when I woke, and being the first one awake in the household, found this fellow clinging to our kitchen screen door on my morning prowl through the house.

He was beautiful, but tangled up in spiderweb detritus on his right front legs. Would he be able to hunt with that mess hampering him?

As soon as I saw him, I went to the other end of the house and tapped on John and Alex's door. "There's a big dragonfly on the kitchen screen door," I said. In a matter of seconds, Alex was out there to see him, and Bernie had his phone out there to take a picture of him.

We're that kind of people. A new bug, a beautiful bug, an amazingly beautiful flower, a sunset, a rainbow -- we stop everything to "go see." Life is so ephemeral, but don't our memories and appreciation last forever?

What would bring this dragonfly to land on our screen, of all the other screens in the neighborhood? How could he know that we honor dragonflies greatly, for their predation of nasty destructive bugs? How could he have been guided to possibly the one house in town in which resided a human who could gently and respectfully take that matted spiderweb from his front leg?

"He's just cold," Alex said, and without harming him, cleaned up his leg for him.

Once the sun came around and warmed things up, he was gone. Cleaned and warmed, he went on his way to eat more mosquitoes and flies.

If God cares enough about a dragonfly to send him to the right place, how much does He care for the people to whom He sent him? 

No, Really, Are They That Intelligent?

There is a red dragonfly that cruises back and forth the length of our swimming pool. I know it's not the same one every year, but every year, there is one.

Kermit sees the dragonfly as sort of a flying chicken wing, and longs to crunch it. (He does eat flies, of course, being a frog.)

I was watching them one afternoon, as Kermit raced down the side of the pool, and the dragonfly zoomed down the center. At the bottom of the pool, the dragonfly would lift off and fly over the fence, with Kermit stomping and roaring on the deck below.

That dragonfly is teasing him, I thought, and then chastised myself for anthropomorphizing animal behavior.

Then yesterday, Kermit and I were in the bedroom, and Kerm was looking out longingly at the pool. Suddenly, a red dragonfly flew up to the door and HOVERED just in front of Kermit's nose. Not for a split second, but for seconds, eliciting a big roar and a rearing on doggy hind legs. Then the dragonfly sailed away.

Seriously. No dragonfly has ever done that before.

Maybe I wasn't so far off as I thought.

Dead Body

Under the bright lights of my work table, I take a morgue photograph of Dragonfly, who was found dead on my husband's work bench.

Time of Death: Unknown. Bernie's work bench has been a shameful landfill since the last time he shoveled everyone else's detritus off it, which would have been about the time of our kitchen remodel (could that only have been a mere year and some ago??) -- unfortunately, the work bench is right outside the door to the garage, and whatever doesn't fit in the house ends up piled on. My work table is along the wall in another area of the garage, and since I am known to be annoyed (go freakin' ballistic) if stuff is plopped in my work area, Bernie and his bench and his mild, sweet ways get the random dumps.

Anyway, how long had Dragonfly been there? Don't know.

Cause of Death: Unknown. Aside from deterioration of the wings, which could have been caused by having detritus piled on top of the body, or battering against a solid object, the cadaver is intact. No bites have been taken out of it; no breakage of vital exoskeleton is evident. It was not, then, caught by a large praying mantis, which would have chewed the head off, or a crow, which would have eaten the whole bug.

Place of Death: Uncertain. In 15 years of residency in this house, we have never had a dragonfly zoom into the house or garage. Did Dragonfly sneak in to make his death a last statement of ferocity, so that when he was found on the workbench behind some burnt-out lightbulbs and jars of long-collected miscellaneous nails and screws, he would make the hairs on the back of Bernie's neck jump up in startlement? Or was it more likely that any ambulatory member of this family might have brought dead Dragonfly in for a closer examination on a whim, forgetting where Dragonfly's remains were temporarily interred? (I say "ambulatory" so as to completely exonerate baby Joan of any complicity in Dragonfly's demise.)

Even in death, the head and abdomen preserve a remarkable gloss, as though polished and buffed, even in this dusty clime; even after months, if not a year, the framework and seemingly fragile panes of much of the wings are intact.

If Dragonfly were a vintage car, the joints of the wings on the thorax might have been detailed and waxed at a high class car wash only hours before the discovery of his corpse.


The leading edge of the wing is reinforced, but what shall we make of that single dark pane? Identification? A distance gauge?

My father used to aggravate my mother to near apoplexy now and again, by telling her that when he died, he was going back into the earth like a dead dog, that he neither expected nor hoped for any afterlife at all. I don't actually know what he really believed, because Mom would never have tolerated an open religious discussion. The best I can do is argue with him from a distance of years ... and death ... and say, "Well, Dad, this is just a damn bug, and I still admire the life that was in it. Don't you think that I still wish I could hear you buzz and get into things and hear your crazy wild laugh?"

Dragonfly, find my dad and bite him on the nose and tell him it's from me.

Surfing Time's Curl

In the evening sunlight, this year's red dragonfly perches on a bamboo stick over my Goliath tomato.

He doesn't worry about how many days he has left -- by the time winter gets here, he'll be toes up in some shrub, his life drifted away in some shallow respirations at the end of his mating season. He doesn't care. He lives, eats, flies, mates, eats, flies, lands on his stick to survey his kingdom. That's good enough for him.

I know that I don't have all that many years left (or days, truth be told) and I want to get to that dragonfly's mentality.

I don't want to worry about the future; that leads to broken sleep and miserable nights.

And in the time that remains, while the wave is still sweet and strong and carries me and my board to exhilarating speeds, I want to live, write, eat, write some more, play with the Press, and hold my newest grand-daughter. Then write some more.

Yet I see the ceiling of water hovering over me, and fret.

Lord, make for me a dragonfly heart.

Transformations

On the Fourth of July, I staggered out of the bedroom with one thought only: hot tea.

However, before I reached the kitchen, Alex and Lillian waylaid me, enthusiastically telling me I MUST see the wonder of the age NOW!

And when I saw it, I forgot about tea for a while and instead grabbed my camera and was privileged to have a photoshoot of a dragonfly that had just emerged from the shell of its nymph stage.

Dragonfly nymphs live underwater for over a year, dodging fish, growing, and shedding their skin from time to time. Then when the time is right, they respond to some biological signal, and climb out of the water.

This one climbed up the wall beside our front door and clung there, safe from predators, but not from paparazzi. Poor patient creature, it gripped its old shell, its abdomen slowly stretching from a lumpy blunt mass to a long, graceful body.

My camera has a low-light setting, fortunately, because the porch is in full shade in the mornings, but so that we could assure ourselves of some good pictures, we brought out a flashlight, and on macro setting, got some spectacular views.

One of the most dramatic of these is the Peek of the Week over at the Piker Press.

Not only is the transformation from nymph to adult an amazing thing to see happen right outside one's front door, but also a stunning validation of the success of our water habitat in the fish pond off the front porch.

We have often watched dragonflies skimming over the little pond, marveled at the one year the wasps had an population explosion and frequented the pool for water, and caught a great egret stalking the remaining fish (the dastardly villain ate all but one of the named fish), but this year has been a triumph, as we discovered five baby fish swimming with the big guys ... and now this creature, grown in the waters of a front yard fish pond.

In this second side shot, you can see how much longer the abdomen of the bug has become. And still the creature hung there, unmoving. After a while, I saw two water droplets fall from the abdomen, dropping ballast, I suppose, getting ready for the aerodynamics of flight.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't fascinated by dragonflies (and damselflies, too). There was a small lake about twenty minutes from where I lived called Zook's Dam; I loved visiting there in the summer, seeing the bluegills beneath the water lilies, the dragonflies lighting on top of the flowers.

Over the course of the morning of the Fourth of July, we went to the porch again and again to see how "our" dragonfly was getting along. I took dozens of photos, most of which were blurred in the dim light, and the awkward way I had to position the camera.


I didn't want to risk touching the insect with the close-focus lens -- emergence from the husk (called an "exuvia", by the way) leaves the bug very soft and vulnerable. If it tried to fly away too soon, one of our scrub jays would find it and eat it in seconds.

At last, on one of our visits, we saw that the dragonfly had unfolded its wings and held them out to the side. The abdomen was thinner, the color of the body darker. The time was at hand.

And then the bug was gone, and I was able to get very close in with my lens and take a picture of the exuvia.


Little filaments were visible, but I was not able to find a single reference on the web to tell me what they were.

The husk is still on the wall outside the door, a reminder of the fantastic "birth" we were allowed to witness, and a testament to the peculiarity and complexity of Life.