One of the hazards of bringing dragonfly and damselfly nymphs into your house overnight is that they sometimes molt into adults and fly away when you’re not looking. That’s what happened with this one:
Fragile forktail (Ischnura posita) damselfly female
Found it sitting on the wall the next morning. My husband is always SO happy when these things happen…
(Note: it is very difficult to convey sarcasm in a blog post.)
_______________
Unless otherwise stated, all text, images, and video are copyright © C. L. Goforth
The Dragonfly Woman 
I disagree. The sarcasm was very evident. He should be thankful it wasn’t something worse. What if you were interested in mosquitoes instead?
Nancy
Agreed! Granted, he’s mostly worried about my hissers getting out of their cage. My hubby is from Chicago and lived in apartments in bad neighborhoods most of his childhood, so he has a very extreme aversion to cockroaches and finds my pets disturbing. He’s also not super fond of having my giant water bugs in the house, but those guys are biters – and fliers – so I keep those, and the roaches, well covered. He probably would have been okay with the damselfly though. If I’d told him about it… :)
When my daughter moved to Atlanta, I was appalled that her house had cockroaches even though she was a very clean housekeeper. Then we moved to Omaha in a heavily wooded area and had all kind of roaches (plus spiders – big juicy ones too) in the house all the time. After a while we just got used to it, but I would have rather they stayed outside.
I can sympathize with your husband, but surely he knew what he was getting into when he married you :)
You know, I remind my husband of that more often than you’d imagine. Every time he complains about my bringing a live insect indoors, I tell him, “You knew what you were getting into when you proposed!” And I’ll admit: roaches don’t bother me one bit, but I also prefer that they stay outside. Having one roach is one thing, but having thousands is a problem. I’d like to keep my total indoor roach population to fewer than 10 if possible, so I don’t like seeing more than a few inside.
HAHAHA My husband can relate. Determined to catch certain plants in bloom for a course project, I brought a few woodland plants indoors and put them in the window. He wasn’t happy to keep coming across the ticks that apparently came along for the ride.
Ha ha! Love it. My hubby would have just died if that happened to us! :)
My wife would be thrilled to have a dragon or damsel emerge overnight in the house. Of course sometimes we have 30 – 40 monarch caterpillars happily munching away in our house. I am very lucky to have a spouse that gets excited when I bring her a pupa, larva, egg case, shiny rock, dead bird, or something else nature-y. She doesn’t think twice about the bugs in the freezer, but they do make her laugh. I do sometimes get sideways glances when I leave a bunch of pinned insects on the dining room table for too long.
I am lucky that my husband doesn’t care about the bugs in the freezer as they take up a significant part of the space in there, but he’s really not thrilled about the live things. Sigh… What can you do?
I decided to post something to the effect of “He should be glad you’re not the Cockroach Woman”, having no idea that you actually ARE, then read your comment above. Great minds thinking alike, I guess.
Ha ha! Yes, he doesn’t like the roaches. However, Mr. Rochester and his harem are so large that they’re not getting out of their cage any time soon. :)
Who could object to a damselfly? Damselflies are awesome. Maybe you just need to unleash more of them in the house so that he realizes this.
That sounds like a GREAT idea! My husband is fine with the bugs when they’re outside – he just doesn’t like them live and indoors. Can’t really blame him, I guess…