We walked up the river a ways and found a nice swimming hole. I ended up all the way in this time . It was so wonderful...Emile loves to swim and he and I circled around each other, me pushing him off so that I don't get scratched.
This is what life is about....
Emile and I found a rock in the center of the river to sit on. I was sitting with rushing water up to my chest. We were in a spot where the sun was streaming through the trees....There were dragonflies skimming the surface. They seem to be attracted to bright white and I have often seen one hover over the top of Emile's white head, like it is some kind of curly landing pad.
I found that if I took my hand and tilted it just right, to light it up, a dragonfly would land on it. Emile sat next to me in the river and watched as dragonfly after dragon fly came, landed and checked me out.
There were 2 types, the beautiful black ones with irridecent blue wings and the ones that like Emile, yellow and blue striped tail with big light blue eyes.
The black ones, I think, were the males ( I could be wrong) ...they stay out of the sun, but the others were attracted to the the bright light of my hand. One would land..I could see one coming from a distance. It would land and we were able to take a good look at it. What an amazing creature.
What a beautiful experience we had.
Most of the life of the dragonfly is spent in the larval (naiad, aka nymph) form, beneath the water surface, using internal gills to breathe, and using extendable jaws to catch other invertebrates, or even vertebrates such as tadpoles and fish. The larvae of large dragonflies may live as long as five years; in smaller species the range is typically between two months to three years.
When the the larva is ready to metamorphose into an adult, it climbs up a reed or other emergent plant at night, and when it does, the breathing pattern changes inside the larva's body. Then the skin splits at a weak spot behind the head and the adult dragonfly crawls out of its old larval skin, waits for the sun to rise, pumps up its wings, and flies off to feed on midges and flies. In the adult stage, larger species of dragonfly can live as long as four months.
Adult Odonata are visually oriented hunters with exceptional aerobatic ability and extremely acute eyesight. Many are strong fliers, and to catch them can be extremely difficult. Males tend to congregate around the breeding sites where they may be seen either perched on waterside vegetation, hovering over small territories or hawking up and down in search of females. Females of many species spend much time away from the water, only appearing to mate and lay eggs, but some congregate with the males.
In Japan, dragonflies have been used as symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in art and literature, especially haiku. In ancient mythology, Japan was known as Akitsushima, which means "Land of the Dragonflies." The love for dragonflies is reflected by the fact that there are traditional names for almost all of the 200 species of dragonflies found in and around Japan (Waldbauer 1998). Japanese children catch large dragonflies as a game, using a hair with a small pebble tied to each end, which they throw into the air. The dragonfly mistakes the pebbles for prey, gets tangled in the hair, and is dragged to the ground by the weight (Mitchell and Lasswell, 2005, p. 38).
Dragonflies also have traditional uses as medicine in Japan and China. In some parts of the world, they are a food source, eaten either as adults or larvae; in Indonesia, for example, they are caught on poles made sticky with birdlime, then fried in oil as a delicacy (Corbet 1999).
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