# Tea with the black dragonfly

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-with-the-black-dragonfly/189517>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [July 19, 2003, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-with-the-black-dragonfly/189517 "2003-07-19T01:45:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2003, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-with-the-black-dragonfly/189517/1 "2003-07-19T01:45:15Z")

</div>

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.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mama\_Tiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6de8d8/32.png) [@Mama\_Tiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Tiger)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2003, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tea-with-the-black-dragonfly/189517/2 "2003-07-19T01:59:22Z")

</div>

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!