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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

dragonfly encounter

click click. silence. buzz. more clicking. i look up. someone- some bug or some such or other- is caught in the patio, buzzing and clicking at the plastic roof over my head. i squint. a dragonfly. of course i will help him.

over the years i have given up on helping certain creatures who find themselves trapped in the patio. as much as it drives me crazy to think of being trapped like that myself, some of the creatures are less likely to be helped than others. birds can be helped. definitely. although sometimes, depending on the species (take juncos, for instance), it can take some time. the time i helped free a hummingbird who had his beak {actually} caught in the screen was memorable. flies are a no. they don't cooperate. rarely. i help some queen ants- something about them being caught in there, unable to fulfill their destiny, gets me. then it wears thin when there are so many. some bees, honey bees or some of the native bees, can be helped some of the time. wasps. yellow jackets. of course. bumble bees, though, no. they are far too angry and beside themselves with their predicament and i can rarely get them in a container safely. they fight it until they wear themselves out. then i can come in and lend a hand.

dragon flies often find their own way out. if they don't, i can usually help them, one way or another. take this one, for example. he avoided the container i tried to use to contain him and it wasn't until i went and found the net that he got serious about getting free. he actually- and this is very common with dragonflies- climbed onto the edge of the net and let me walk him {on the net} outside. once outside, he stayed put while i set the net down, propping it up against the sandbox, ran inside, set up the camera, came back outside and {voila!} took a picture of him on the net.



but just one picture. once i started fiddling around with lighting and angle, he was gone. out of there. flying off to wherever it was he had been going before his path crossed with mine. caught in the screened in porch. one summer day. i wonder if he'd been there before. did it seem as familiar to him as it did to me? drat. this plastic ceiling blocking my way once again. when will i remember not to fly this way, this way that always seems to find me caught? trapped. on my way to where i need to be. unless this is where i need to be. or simply where i am.

and as always, for me, it is a perfect encounter, giving me food for my thoughts, for this writing, for my day. i wish i had been able to catch the glint of his wings in the sunshine- although the way it looks, you can almost {almost} see how he is holding on tight, keeping an eye on me, waiting for just the right time to fly off.

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