Psychopomp is a fancy and beautiful word for a being that serves as a guide into the afterlife. Today was my second time acting in this capacity to an insect brethren. My first encounter is detailed here:Death of a butterfly.
So, I’ve spent all day today catching up on the boards, reading and posting and frolicking, the usual. A few hours ago, I heard a strange, high-paced scratching noise coming from the living room. I thought it was the dog or something and paid it no heed. Of course, the dog was upstairs, but oh how easy it is to attribute non-scary reasons to sinister noises. An hour or so later, I heard the same noise, except this time it was coming from the printer. “Fucking printer is acting funny” I thought. “The main purpose of printers is to have problems and make strange noises” I opined. Still, I never heard the printer making a skittering noise. It almost sounded alive or something.
Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch, closer towards Niagara Fa… I mean the printer. When I got in front of it, I saw something black in the dark crevices of the paper-out tray. This something black moved. It made that skittering noise. It had… wings. It was a bug! OMG BUG! BUG!!! FLYING BUG IN THE HOOOOUUUSSEEE AAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! Im in ur sunporch, scaring your pplz!!
An hour later, when I regained consciousness, I decided to investigate. Luckily, it wasn’t a giant man-eating wasp, as I had feared. No, it was a dragonfly. Dragonflies are cool! I like dragonflies, but not in the house, and especially not this one. See… this one was… not well. It was not flying really, it was just buzzing along the ground and bashing into things. bbbzzztttt flutter flutter bbbzzzztt bzzztt krrssshshh flutter… It was sad really, but I was too freaked out to be sad at that point.
I decided that it must be coralled out of the house. I was too afraid to get near it, because of the buzzing and flying and insectiness of it all, so I would get near it, make stomping notions, and point towards the living room and open door. I tried projecting a mental map of the house and way outside, but clearly dragonflies are low on telepathic powers. At that point, I thought that maybe dragonflies were like moths, and so I turned off all the lights except the ones near the exit. No dice. All turning off the lights did was make it bbzzzttt-kerfluffle in the dark. You know, I almost would have been happy if it COULD fly, because up until the end I wasn’t sure that maybe it was only buzzing on the ground in an attempt to get my guard down, at which point it would buzz into my hair or something. Ok, that’s anthropomorphizing a tad, but I was scared! I’m usually very macho, roundhouse kicking bears and drinking 40-packs, but flying bugs get under my skin… not literally, although that would suck too.
Ok ok, moving on with the story, since moving the dragonfly outside was no good, I thought I could ignore it. Yes, I would post on the dope and just ignore it. All would be well. This… did not work. It apparently liked the ground near my computer chair, and as soon as it shuffled close I freaked and ran into the living room. I had just enough time to relate my situation to a female penpal friend, who replied that ‘dragonflies are awesome.’ I siad I was half-scared and half-excited. No… I must not be scared in the presence of a woman! Auto are brave man, he show insect who boss.
I got a pot and a lid from the kitchen. I tried to get in the pot, but it would buzz away at the last second. Then I got caught in some wires. I couldn’t successfully capture it without level ground. Sadly, I was fresh out of poke balls. Finally, I got it in the pot. I went outside, opened the lid, and… nothing. I only THOUGHT I had gotten it in the pot. After much struggling, I then successfully potted it, and let it out on the lawn outside. It didn’t fly away… it just lay on the grass 
By this point, my fear had totally subsided, and I started to feel bad. It had a huge clump of dust bunny on its leg/arms from skittering on the floor, so I picked that off. Still nothing. Oh well. I squatted down and looked at it for a while, examining the beautiful crystalline matrices of its wings. If dragonflies can live and fly on such graceful fragile wings, then maybe our fragile lives can be graceful too.
