Special creatures spotted on a Sunday afternoon...
Last Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining and, as far as could be determined, the heat index was not 109 degrees. That was quite an improvement over what we experienced in our little corner of the world on Independence Day.
Since it did not seem likely that a person would melt, or at the least wither on the vine like a water-starved tomato plant in the Southern Illinois heat and humidity, yours truly decided it would be a good time for a daily walkabout.
Turned out that July’s bright shining Sunday afternoon sunshine was still a bit on the warm side. Maybe that was why I was lucky enough to see so many dragonflies out and about.
I are dragonflies are fascinating little creatures. There seem to be so many different kinds of them. And their ability to dart here and there is pretty amazing. They are finely crafted engineering masterpieces of flying natural gems.
As I was heading back in the general direction of home, I made brief stop at the park in the downtown area of our hometown. There’s a basketball court at the park. Somebody had left a basketball at the park.
I guess just because it was there, I picked up the basketball and took a few shots. I was quickly reminded how bad I was at basketball. We’ll just say that I finally made a basket after a “few” shots. Then it was time to head back home and get Sunday dinner started.
Twenty-four hours or so later, I was able to get in Monday’s walk...after a bit of a delay. How things had changed in the great outdoors in a very short time.
That was all thanks to what formerly was known as Hurricane Beryl, which brought us a “a whole bunch” of rain. Given the amount of rain we’ve had lately, it’s hard to believe we were experiencing a drought not all that long ago.
Blistering heat and humidity. The Mississippi River is flooding. Again. The remnants of what used to be a hurricane. At least it didn’t snow...
By the way, I have no idea what dragonflies might do during a hurricane. I’m thinking the smart thing for them to do would be go somewhere and find a nice, bare tree branch on a sunny summer afternoon...
We’ll wrap up with a update about a critter that was mentioned last week...
The white-tailed deer fawn which paid a visit to The Other Half’s garden last week “disappeared” for a while. We saw the fawn again Sunday. It was still cute...