Tea with the black dragonfly

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.

We have many lovely dragonflies around here, but alas, even with a large dragonfly population, we have an even larger mosquito population.

And while I’m generally not a fan of wide-dispersal insecticides, I have to admit that when the mosquito truck just rolled down the street a few minutes ago, I cheered aloud.

But dragonflies are my favorite insects. Japan has truly spectacular and beautiful dragonflies; I particularly noticed them when I was there. I guess they’re one of those successful evolutionary designs – but far, far more attractive than their equally successful distant relative the cockroach!