Summer on Sugar Island

            

 

In dedication 

to the solemn death of the damselflies

and my days and nights on Sugar Island

Prelude

      The rain started to fall on the leaves. It sounded like a crescendo rhythm. “ti—ta—ti--ta”, “ti-ta-ti-ta”, “tititata—tititata”…

      I pulled out the hat of my raincoat, stood up to relax the muscles on my legs and moved the flags to where the larvae were. There must be some magnet that trapped me there in the rain. I had been followed these two Epitheca final instars for the whole morning. Since they came out of the water, they had crawled across the beach, climbed up a cliff and passed the poisoned ivy. They must be heading the forest, probably a red pine, for the most exciting and dramatic moment of their life—emergence.

      Rain poured down. One of the instars found a dead leaf and hide there. The other one—No. 39 in my field book—sped up his crawling. He crossed the narrow pine-piont-trail, which certainly passed any records of how far the final instars travel before they emergence so far. He moved so fast that there was no time for me to move the flags. Half an hour later, he rested in the forest 16 meters away from the water.

      I grabbed my sandwich while still kept an eye on it. I was afraid of losing track of him. There were some times that I thought I lost him but I always found him again several minutes later.

      The rain stopped. There came little sun. I stood up, decided to leave since No.39 hadn’t moved for a long time. I just turned my head and amazingly found that an Epitheca was emerging right in front of me. The soft head the thorax had come out but he was still pulling his abdomen out. This made all my staying in the rain worthwhile, I thought. Then something shined and I heard a little sound. A teneral was waving its wings not far from this pulling one. His wings were still wet and had a color of yellow jade. Looked into that direction, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes—there were probably hundreds of Epitheca emerging in this small area of forest. Some of them were pulling themselves out of exuvia (exuvia are the cuticles where the larvae lived in and the last thing they need to caste off before they become adults), some were drying the wings, some flipping the wings and about to ascend into the air. I suddenly felt I entered a wonderland, the one in Hayao Miyazaki’s film. My mind started to become light and was willing to take off with them.

The afternoon was unforgettable.