The school bus brought us the short distance from Camp Drake and we fanned out from the bus stop. I found myself almost home oddly alone in the center of my block. These Monopoly house looking abodes were arranged around the sides of each block creating an open space in the center of each. Luxuriously wide open space at the Northwest edge of Tokyo with the city rapidly encroaching around it. Our block had one of the better playgrounds. A single dragonfly whipped by, then another, then several, then a swarm and I stood there and took it, getting hit by bugs because I was amazed at the spectacle and I knew then this is a one-time thing. A migration!
All that is gone now, a good part of the complex Grand Heights, Camp Drake, Momote Village, now a park named Showa Kinen, divided into four sections, the D section contains Dragonfly Marsh.
A few years ago I had two ten gallon tanks set up side by side in a bedroom with two chairs set in front of them. The tanks were set up with strong lights and heavily planted. I was sitting there watching when I was suddenly startled by the sight of a large menacing bug in the tank. I had not seen the likes of it. Sinister in appearance. The way it moved through the tank added to its menace. It slithered, making S motions in continuous waves, it undulated across the length of the tank then disappeared in the plants. It was large enough to threaten neon tetras. I wanted it out.
A few days later I hear a fluttering. Turns out to be a dragonfly using the tank as its home. It lived for a couple days.
5 comments:
(1) I once saw some kind of a bug crawling around on one of my cichlids. Might have been a Jack Dempsey. Startled me to shit and I mean this thing had spindly legs and IT WAS FUCKING CRAWLING AROUND ON ONE OF MY FISH!!!1!!!!!
(2) I don't remember how I got it off. I would be significantly older before I learned that a nymph was also a hot chick, an imaginary chick, an imaginary hot chick, an imaginary hot chick so you can get it off.
(3) I once had a fish die from an anchor worm. Man, that was fucking gross.
(4) Hey! Did you know that if you google "Jack Dempsey" it turns out there used to be a guy named Jack Dempsey? No, really. I think he might have been a boxer or something athletic like that.
(5) We've got these tiffany lamps with dragonflies on them. I think they're kind of offputting but we couldn't find any tiffany lamps with fluffy bunnies on them so we had to make do.
Having one's childhood get demolished is an interesting phenomenon. Most of my childhood landmarks have been demolished. But this being Orlando, other buildings have been put on top of them. So the schools I attended have all been torn down, only to have new schools built on top of them. (Or rather, built on the same lots, as they're often offset from the location of the old buildings.)
So there's still a Meadowbrook, but now it is a middle-school instead of a junior high, and the buildings are not only different and wrong, they're in the wrong place on the lot. The track is also in the wrong place. Evans High School is still near the corner of Silver Star and Pine Hills Roads, but the buildings are wrong. It's like being in an alternate reality.
The houses in my old neighborhood do remain, however. But now they've been baked in the sun for an additional 30 years, and the whole place looks run down and shabby. (Because it is run down and shabby.) The good news is that there's no way I can envision my daughter ever looking back on this place and thinking, "Man, it was so much better when I was young!" That includes the possibilities of both zombie and nuclear apocalypses.
What a fantastic childhood memory.
Are dragonflies like in the same family as fly flies? Reason I ask is they are so benign. I don't ever remember being treated like food by a dragonfly.
Sweet picture, Chip. Great giffing, too :)
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