It Crawled Out of Itself

Cold and rainy. There’s been so much rain, recently, that water has started seeping into, rising up like spring water, through the porous, seventy-year-old concrete in our basement. An old Johnny Cash song I’d learned when young began looping through my head throughout the day: “How high’s the water Momma?”

Fortuitously, on this rainy day, I could stay home and observe nature. A dragonfly emerged in the morning: a Common Whitetail, the nymph collected nearly a month ago (on April 24). This dragonfly is one of the skimmer dragonflies that has banding of the eyes; not nearly as complex as the wood grain patterned eyes of the Filigree Skimmer, but still interesting.

Recently, I showed a neighbor several dragonfly nymphs. He stared at them in disbelief. Like caterpillar and butterfly, the difference between the nymph and the adult dragonfly defies immediate comprehension. This difference between nymph and adult, which to me seems more remarkable than the difference between caterpillar and butterfly because dragonfly nymphs live in an entirely different world underwater. This transformation is diminished by the technical term “incomplete metamorphosis,” as though there is something missing from its life. Occasionally, this three-stage life cycle—egg, nymph, adult—is referred to as simple or gradual metamorphoses. Complete or complex metamorphosis includes the additional pupa stage.

Posted on May 21, 2017 03:08 AM by