Sheer Determination

  It was with good intentions that I headed out to the north side of the house this morning.  My idea was to clean the frog pond after letting it sit dormant for the winter.  Keeping a spotless pond in the cool months is rather insensitive to the critters.  They need that leaf mulch in the bottom, the algae floating in the water and the overgrowth of lilies and hyacinths to help them keep warm.  Once it warms, however, I NEED it cleaned.  It was with high hopes that the deed would be done today since I have recently been hearing the frogs and toads starting their calling.  It will not be long before the pond is a nursery for little tadpoles and the cleaning will not get done.  Yep...I had good intentions.

  Just as I started pulling the roots of the hyacinths, a critter caught my eye and that ended the whole shebang.  A dragonfly nymph was making its way up the stem of an elephant ear.  The tiny new growth of the plant was to be the morphing spot for the dragonfly.  Being as I was witness to the beginning of this process, I figured I had better just sit back and be here for the long haul.  In the past, the morphing took about an hour.  Boy!  Was I in for a surprise!  This fellow took two whole hours to change but, in all fairness, the critter obviously had some underlying issues that made it difficult.

  My first clue that something was wrong was when the dragonfly exited its husk and bent over backwards.  Hmmm.  This never happened before.  After often being reprimanded for interfering with the natural course of things, I suppressed the wish to help the critter.  (I am not sure just how I would have helped anyway.)  At this point, I will admit to interfering just a wee bit when the little fellow lost its grip and fell into the water.  I gently lifted him up to a leaf so he could get a good grip.  Then the insect was back on its own.

  About an hour and a half into the morphing, I noticed that the tail of the dragonfly seemed to be misshapened.  Poor little guy!  Still, the critter was determined to complete the change and was soon stretching its wings to their complete length.  It took a while for the wings to become functional but it was that tail that bothered me.  

  The dragonfly did make it through the morphing stage and did take flight...sort of...maybe.  Without the sturdy tail to act as a rudder, the little guy was sort of limping along (if one can limp in flight).  There is no way of telling exactly what went wrong but, chances are, it was something that occurred while the insect was still a nymph.  Perhaps one of the resident frogs took a nip at the nymph or it had gotten squished at some point.  Still, the determination of the nymph to make the change and become a dragonfly was inspiring.  For the critter to take flight was downright amazing.  Good luck, little one!  You are going to need it.