In the stories of old a brave knight would go out and sleigh the dragon to save the damsel. Today I was the brave Knight but I was saving the dragons. This morning turned out quite nice, warm and sunny, and obviously the naiads hunkering down in my pond thought it would be a good day to hatch. Little did they know that by mid morning a storm of epic proportions would come through and would soak their wings and weigh down the plant stalks on which they were drying would plop down into the pond. During brief break in the rain I wandered out onto the patio and found three dragonflies literally drowning in the rain. Knowing I could not let such a thing happen, one by one I lifted them from the pond and brought them into my kitchen and placed them gently onto some sunflowers which I had cut from the lawn yesterday. (I now apologise for the absolute awful quality of the following photographs but I was more interested in saving the dragonflies than I was about taking photographs).
I left them in the kitchen for a while, catching their breath, just getting thier bearings and resting on the sunflowers. After a while the rain stopped and the sun came out, so I took the container which housed the sunflowers out onto the concrete patio table where the dragonflies sat and absorbed the sun. Covered in pond weed and still saturated with water they waited. As I watched, and looked more closely it occurred to me that I had three different types of dragonfly that I had rescued hatching on the same day. First a Dragonhunter, which in retrospect I should have let drown as his diet consists of other dragonflies and swallowtail butterflies but you know!
Next an Eastern Pondhawk, either a female or an immature male in the green phase.
Finally (my id is a little shakey here) a female blue dasher.
After the sun had warmed their wings a little while I performed some surgery with a toothpick to separate their sodden wings and remove what I could of the sticky pondweed. Soon each had four functioning wings and were happy to sit and dry them. By now they trusted me and when it was time for a little "surgery" they happily climbed onto my finger to be "treated".
At one point I think the dasher might have thought that I was "mom"
Every now and again one of them would flutter their wings, trying them out, just in case they were ready, and, inevitably eventually they were. And away they flew, on gossamer wings. I suppose there would be a boat load of people who would think "my god what a waste of a day" but me? Nope, I think it was a wonderful day, a day when I saved three lives, albeit tiny lives, but three lives nonetheless. Sometimes it is good to be me. :)
