The Dragonfly and the Cricket

"Come quick...bring your camera"
OilMan is becoming an excellent blip spotter and I have been encouraging him to join Blipfoto. I get the usual excuses...the same ones I always gave Lady Findhorn when she was encouraging me to join.
"I can't write"
"I don't want to take a picture every day"
"I don't know where my camera is"
"I hate computers"
He is an excellent photographer and took beautiful pictures on many a backpacking trip. I think the experience of carrying around 30 pounds of camera eqipment may have put him off, even though I tell him he could use his phone now. Of course he doesn't carry that with him either....

What OilMan spotted today was this dragonfly sitting motionless on some pond grass clutching a desiccated cricket to its breast. Do dragonflies have breasts? Perhaps a carapace? I think that a carapace only covers the backs of turtles and such.

The dragonfly was so still, even as I shoved a camera in its face,  that I feared that it too was dead. Do dragonflies have faces? They seem to be nothing but eyes and perhaps what are curiously called 'mouthparts'. I touched it with a leaf and it flew off, abandoning the cricket. Definitely not dead....

We are being rewarded with beautiful weather just now. Having bagged my dragonfly, I am now sitting on the porch watching grosbeaks, jays,--stellar and scrub-- chickadees, finches both gold and purple, and a tufted titmouse. I am being buzzed by hummingbirds, and can hear a hawk screaming from what we feel must be a nearby nest. The acorn woodpeckers have used their allotted time (yes, there IS a pecking order) and gone off to make holes in our house. OilMan is threatening to get a BB gun. I am telling him he will do no such thing.

OilMan doesn't like being told he can't shouldn't do something.
Maybe I should tell him he definitely shouldn't join Blipfoto....

The extra is a cartoon from the New Yorker which perfectly illustrates how I spent my morning. And it really did take much of the morning. Fortunately, OilMan helped me with that too, or it would have taken much longer....