King or Queen

Over the past year, I have been away from my wife overnight while working more than the rest of time together combined.

Because of this, we find ways of keeping the other in our thoughts.

Somehow, I appointed the egret as my animal.  There always seemed to be one flying or walking nearby when I was thinking about something difficult.  Having one or more around was just cool.

Jennifer has developed an association with ravens.  Somewhat from reading American Gods, but somewhat for the same reason as me with egrets.

She also has an affinity for butterflies (hence two of her tattoos).  Some of this comes from our visit to the butterfly house at The-Park-Formerly-Known-as-Marine-World, and some from the butterfly house in Key West that we visited twice while there.  She’s also had some other personal experiences with butterflies.
And then there’s dragonflies.  I find them fascinating, and like the things they hunt (mosquito larvae and, a recent find, termites).  I’ve had some close encounters with them including a big one that was sitting next to a lock at a job site one time.  Unfortunately, I don’t have that picture on my computer; it must be on the NAS at home.

But with these affinities, Jennifer and I know when the other is thinking about us.  Sometimes.

Last year when I was in Madera, there was one day when no matter where I looked for about 5 minutes, there was a butterfly swooping across my vision.  It was just as if Jennifer were waling past me saying, “Hi, honey.”  That day was the end of my stay at that job, and before I hit the road, I sent her a text saying I was on my way home.  I knew when she got the message, because while on the highway, a cloud of butterflies suddenly erupted from the flowering bushes in the median.

She had a similar experience one day at Lake Merritt.  She was thinking about me, and suddenly an egret landed on the beach n ear here and walked slowly across her vision while she was reading, seeming to make sure that she noticed it.

So yesterday I had an amazing experience with dragonflies.  We had cut down a tree a few weeks ago, and yesterday finally did some digging near it.  I think the excavator bumped it going by, but I noticed later that it was covered in winged termites.  The termites started taking to the air, and I saw two dragonflies start swooping through them, eating them on the wing.  Soon, there were at least eight dragonflies hunting through the fleeing termites.

Dragonflies and Termites

The termites are invisible, but the swooping things are the dragonflies.

And then today, I saw a butterfly flit by.  It stopped for a second on a large transformer, and I thought I’d get a picture, but it flew away.  Then it landed on the fence, so I got as many pictures of it as I could before it flew away.

It just kept opening and closing its wings in the sunlight.  I waited each time for it to open before I took the picture.  The third one is my since the wings were flattest and so the whole insect is in focus.









These aren’t with any fancy camera either.  This is just a basic, digital point-and-shoot.