Check out this photo I snapped with my phone recently:

Blue corporal

We had a fancy picnic at work and offered activities for the attendees to keep them occupied until they ate.  After I arrived back from the pond, a child ran up to me with a plastic bug jar and asked if I could tell him what was inside.  It was this dragonfly.  The kid kept saying, “It’s alive!  It’s alive!” but you would have been hard pressed to tell that it was, in fact, alive as it sat there perfectly motionless, lying at an odd, not-terribly-alive angle.  I realized why he was so still when the kid picked up the jar and shook the heck out of it, rattling the dragonfly around inside!  Horrified, I convinced the child to focus his attention on an identification book and once he discovered that it was a blue corporal, he dumped it out on the ground and ran inside for dinner.  I couldn’t resist taking a photo of something I never thought possible – a live dragonfly that let me pick it up – as I moved the poor little guy out of harm’s way.  I ran to get a better camera, but by the time I got back he was gone.  I hope he has a good life out there.  He deserves it after the trashing he got!

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