I live in a coastal town. Not a coastal town with a lot of nice beaches, a coastal town with a lot of salt marshes – Nature’s gift to stinging and biting insects. So even with a generous dollop of DEET cologne, I can rely on donating a certain amount of blood to the survival of the mosquito race on any given day. That’s why I was particularly charmed by the following episode.
Yesterday evening, I was reading outside in a sunny and therefore relatively bug-free location when a friendly dragonfly alit on the pocket of my cargo shorts. Fine with me. It was a large and attractive dragonfly -- mostly black with gauzy black-striped wings and lovely copper eyes and mandibles. I watched it for a while and then it suddenly took off, made a * very * quick circle over my legs and returned to exactly the same spot it had taken off from. In its mandibles was a good-sized mosquito which it calmly devoured. A minute or so later, my new friend flew off and the last I saw it, it was flitting about, further reducing the mosquito population.
It was a brief, perfect moment of symbiosis. I attracted the mosquito, the dragonfly got a snack, and I retained my precious bodily fluids.
Dragonflies would make great pets.