King of the Fairies!

It was a most excellent day! Monday is a holiday in the U.S., and so I took Friday off as a vacation day to make a four-day weekend. My husband and I went swimming to my favorite place to swim - Whipple Dam. The nights have sometimes been a bit cool in the past week or two, but the water was fine - lovely and cool and clear - and we swam for a long, long time.

When I am there, one of my favorite things to do is to look for dragonflies and damselflies, and this day did not disappoint. When I walked into the water to swim, a small damselfly with purple-blue eyes sat on my shoulder for a long time. I stood there making eye contact with it, feeling very happy and very special (the blessing of the damselfly?) and wishing for my camera, and it only left when I finally immersed myself in the water.

The funniest thing I saw all day was when we went to the changing rooms to change back into our shorts and t-shirts, and a chipmunk that apparently lives there came out and looked at us beseechingly, so my husband tossed it a few peanuts, which it ate greedily, turning them over and over in its little paws. The funny part was when I first saw the chipmunk - it came out from under the blocks of the building, leaped up, and caught and ate a tiny moth, shoving it into its mouth with its paws! I have seen many chipmunks, but I've never seen one do that!

The most excellent sight of the day, though, and the one that made me smile from the very top of my head to the tips of my toes, was this spreadwing damselfly, perched on a twig in the water, playing peekaboo. It is actually a spreadwing damselfly of some kind, but on this particular visit, it looked much more like the king of the fairies to me!

The song to accompany this blue-eyed wonder is Sheena Easton, For Your Eyes Only.