They say skeptics like me will not be convinced until "it" happens to us. I have always been skeptical of:
But maybe I need to rethink all of this, now that I have seen a conspiracy up close and personal.
Turn the clock back to September 1, 2007 (Cinematic moment: envision the pages fly off a calendar -- "look, there goes one! There goes the other!" Scene done). Net in hand, I prowl the stream banks looking for insect candidates for my macro portraits. I find two -- the Cabbage White shown in the preceding post, and a Meadowhawk dragonfly. I net them (and didn't embarrassingly fall in the water like I did the first time I tried that - a story for another day), take them back to the RV, and let them play in my tiny studio that used to be a plastic bread box, complete with a custom backdrop and two-source lighting. I snap photos of them as they pose, wings in various stages of opening and closing. I then let them return to their homes in the great outdoors.
The Cabbage White left almost immediately, but the Meadowhawk did not want to leave and kept flying back in. Twice he even landed on my arm, but I was firm and made him go out into the cold, dark night (okay it was a summer night, and the moon was only four days away from full, but for a dragonfly this was probably very cold and dark). Sadly, the next morning I found his little red corpse at the foot of my steps. He had only tasted freedom for twelve inches before succumbing. One small foot that marked the difference between a life of flitting on a babbling brook in the sparkling summer sun --- or being bird food.
I'll never know what would have happened if I hadn't forced him away, if I had let him stay in the comfort and safety of the RV. But my thoughtlessness has cost me. I now know that CONSPIRACIES ARE REAL (we True Conspiracy Believers always type in all caps because we think it makes us sound sincere), as I have become the latest victim of what can only be called the Insect Illuminati Conspiracy. For as I left to go to the laundromat today, I started to pull open the truck's door and was immediately bitten in the finger by an bee or wasp who had been hiding there, just waiting for revenge. As the pain swelled and I began to feel a numbness where I was bitten, I looked down at the ground, and "I" was twelve inches from the body of the little red dragonfly. Justice was served.
Read more about Insect Conspiracies here. The Truth is out there.
5 comments:
If you had let the dragonfly stay in the RV you would have interfered with a natural process. There were probably thousands of other dragonflies out there that night, some survived, some died.
Don't be fooled by logic -- that's just what the Insect Illuminati want you to think! ;)
Zo, it definitely sounds like you have been out in the sun way too long. Time for you to come in and take your medicine. In time, all this will be a faded memory and all will right with the world again, including your insect friends. NC
Bright stars intrigue me, especially if they can write as well as you do. I once owned an 8" Celestron, and my bedroom was a darkroom in the eighth grade, but neither are current hobbies. One that is, happens to be an illuminati-ng virtual campfire where Reasonable Rational SKePtics gather:
www.skpfreethinkers.thoughtsaloud.com
Your wit would be most welcome there.
There is a Japanese saying:
Aki no ki no
Aka-tombo Ni
Sadamarinu
Translation: That the autumn season has begun is decided by the [appearance of the] red dragonfly.
Post a Comment