Day 251

Blue-eyed Darners about to mate.

The mating ritual of the dragonfly is something to behold. 

The theory is that the male dragonflies have evolved a mating method whereby they don't get eaten by the female, unlike their poorer relatives, the mantids.  So the picture here shows what could be considered foreplay in the dragonfly world.  The female has to accept the male, and then he carefully grabs her head with his anal  appendages, which position he will hold before, during and after copulation. 

The male dragonfly has his genital opening for sperm at the ninth abdominal segment.  He also has secondary genitalia on his second segment.  Just before copulation he moves the sperm from the ninth to the second segment.  When the couple have found a suitable place, the female then curves her ovipositor forward to make contact with the second segment and receives the sperm.  They make a heart or wheel shape and this is called "The Wheel position".  (As opposed to all the other positions in the dragonfly Kama Sutra, like the "Bicycle position", or the "Antelope position".)

I'm glad I'm not a dragonfly, although the copulation of human beings is almost as funny.  I would be very angry to be held by the head before, during and after though.

I went for a long awkward walk, feeling like someone recovering from surgery, after a terrible night trying to get comfortable with a sore back.  I am no good with pain, it is SO debilitating.  (I know no one is really good with pain, but I think I am the worst, if anything bad (very painful) happened to me I would just curl up and die.  I would not be brave.  I would hate it, I would hate to be dependent on someone, especially if they had to wipe my bum.)  But I am a believer in exercise for any defective part of the body, so yesterday I went running thinking that it would solve my back-ache.  But I think it made it worse.  So today I went walking merrily through the meadow, swinging my hips and my arms in an attempt to improve the elasticity of my ligaments, muscles or whatever it was that was hurting so much!  Tonight it seems a little better, so I am hopeful. 

So a pencil portrait of Emma for tonight.  Nick said something wicked at the dinner table this evening, and I chided him, "Emma! Nick, I mean!" which I often seem to do, confusing these two children of the four, so alike in many ways, hot-headed and with a twinkle in their eyes.