We’re in the late February doldrums where I live in the U.S. There are banks of dirty snow on shaded slopes. Enough black ice on sidewalks and streets in the morning that bike riding is hazardous. Not much sun. That and the depressing world scene leads me to share a hot-weather essay on a favorite topic. Enjoy.
Dragonflies are among the world’s most ancient creatures and have been performing the mid-summer mating dance that I have observed almost every year of my life for 300 million years. That’s more than 100 million years before dinosaurs appeared.
I can remember being fascinated by this dance as a youngster, although I didn’t understand that it was all about making baby dragonflies.
My brother and I would trap lightning bugs in Mason jars to sell to the man at the agricultural research station. He paid us a dime a jar for his research into what made the bugs’ tails glow, but I would never consider trapping dragonflies for any amount of money. Even then they occupied a special place in my world.
Perhaps it was because their dance reminded me of dog fighting World War I flying machines, which captured my imagination at an early age, but I would like to think that the connection was more subtle.
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