Rainy Day Visions?

  It has been one of those drizzly, winter days that makes it a grand idea to stay inside.  I spent the time baking Christmas cookies and wrapping the last few gifts.  While waiting for the cookies to bake, I perused some of my old photographs. 

   Sometimes when I review the old files, I see things in a whole new perspective.  This was the case today as an "unseen figure" popped up in one photograph.  Last spring, I had the opportunity to watch several dragonflies morph from their nymph stage to their adulthood.  During this process the aquatic nymphs crawl from the water in the frog pond and climb up the water hyacinth stalks.  There, the outer skin of the critter splits and the new adult dragonfly flexes its wings until they are dry.  Once it has completed its transformation, it takes flight and becomes a predator of the sky instead of beneath the water.  

  Oftentimes, however, during that vulnerable stage of morphing, the predator becomes the prey.  In some of the photographs that I took on that spring morning, a gory incident obviously had taken place.  A spider had found the newly hatched dragonfly before it had finished the transformation to adulthood.  While it was still unable to defend itself, the spider devoured the poor thing. This had to be a painful death for the defenseless dragonfly but in a world where only the fit survive, it was nothing out of the ordinary.  Life went on with the spider becoming the victor.  

  Back when I had taken the photographs, I had overlooked the presence of the spider.  It took a rainy day to bring things into focus...or, at least, a second, lingering look.  Hmmm, makes me wonder just how many spiders I am not seeing!  CREEPY!