Ten years ago I was privileged to witness the emergence of a dragonfly from its nymph form. A creature that at first glance had seemed like a beetle to my untrained eye had crawled laboriously up from my back yard, attached itself to the side of the concrete step leading to the sliding glass door to my bedroom, and remained there, unmoving, tempting me to believe it had died.
I don’t remember exactly how long it remained there, but it was long enough for me to pass it a number of times on my way back and forth to the alley behind my house. Then, the last time I started to pass it, I discovered to my surprise that the back of its carapace had split open, and the dragonfly it had become was perched atop the empty shell that had sheltered it, had been it, and was now unfolding its wings in the afternoon sun. I watched until the wings, now fully dried, suddenly began to vibrate, then powered a beautiful, iridescent liftoff and arrow-like disappearance into the distance, a movement almost too fast to follow with the naked eye.
Being a child of the 20th/21st centuries, my first thought at witnessing this astonishing sequence of events was that any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic, my second that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Being a child of the 20th/21st centuries, I didn’t find those two thoughts to be incompatible. Now, ten years later, I still don’t.
What a wonderful story! It reminds me of camping at my Dad’s pond in 2017 during a major cicada emergence. The things were popping out all over the place. Our dog had a field day rushing from place to place in the grass eating as many of them as she could find. I think she enjoyed the crunchiness.
I found a newly emerged one that had managed to avoid Bisho and crawl up onto the bark of a tree. It was a soft, cream color, but its wings were astonishing! They were a translucent white at the tips that faded into the most amazing, almost fluorescent green where they joined at the shoulders, and veined with white. I wish I could post the picture because my description is wholly inadequate at capturing how amazing it really was.
Yeah, the creatures who share the world with us are so incredibly, astonishingly diverse. I had no clue about the dragonfly’s life cycle, of course, and couldn’t believe such a radical transformation could take place without a pupal stage, but indeed it does. The even more astonishing fact is that the nymph stage in some species can last as long as five years. No wonder Darwin spent so long at his task—he must have felt exalted when he finished, as though he’d discovered the Holy Grail. You really should find somewhere to post your pics. Here’s a link to a person’s site who has the passion—and the patience—to snap various dragonfly emergences:
https://thedragonflywoman.com/2013/06/04/dragonfly-emergence/
Oh, those are great! It takes a special kind of patience to do this kind of photography. Heck, nature photography of any kind. Whenever I get a shot like that it just means I got very, very lucky!
This is the sort of thing that makes the internet such a marvel despite its malignancies. The instant access to anything in the world you want to know, the most diverse display of human talent ever imagined—the humorists and dancers of TikTok, the demonstrations of how to handle any mechanical or electrical repair on YouTube, the huge selection of the world’s library and art museum collections a mere click away.
I may not have known anything about the dragonfly’s life cycle, but somebody did, and they were willing to share. I find that immensely encouraging somehow, despite all the griping I’ve done about the pernicious effects of our online free-for-all. Who knows, once we absorb the initial shock, and recover our collective equilibrium—assuming we ever do—we may finally discover just how much potential there is in having the world too much with us.
“The instant access to anything in the world you want to know, the most diverse display of human talent ever imagined—”
Yes, this. Despite the efforts of the Melon Husks of the world – who, despite being in the vanguard of all of this, neglected to realize the democratizing potential of it all and now are desperate to control and/or warp it – the internet remains to me one of the most amazing places in my lifetime.
The goons and goblins, with their outsized voices and egos, will have a very hard time pushing this genie back into its bottle. And I am glad because I have met so many people who have been kind, helpful and wonderful. People who have literally saved me from more misery than I care to contemplate. That has value and people are willing to fight for it.
Indeed. Also this:
A cartoon I saw a couple of years ago depicted a picnic table full of middle-aged folks yakking it up. Twenty or so feet away, another picnic table revealed a lone teenager scrolling intently through her cellphone screen.
Speech bubble: “C’mon, honey, put the phone away and come talk to us.”
Thought bubble: “Talk to you? Why would I want to talk to YOU? Over here I can hang out with Aristotle, Einstein, Picasso….”
No, those almost certainly wouldn’t be the examples a teenager would come up with first, but I think the cartoonist was spot on about the nature of almost any teenager’s reaction to such an invitation/demand from her elders.
It’s certainly my nephew’s. He’s in his first year of college. His two younger sisters are a bit less brutal. They also like to do a lot of arts and sports stuff. They’re good kids.