I never did name it.

My memory of this story is hazy and I still don't believe it but I was there and it happened to me. Pleas correct me if I'm wrong. I'd like to hear others recollections of the story too.


I don't know how you actually help dragonflies when they get injured and that does not happen often. They are fierce hunters that eat anything they can fit in their mouths and move like lightning up, down, over, and through. I could never catch the big ones. their bright wings were always a few feet away from my outstretched hand. I would run around till I was dizzy and have nothing but gumbo in my toes. The dragonfly was the unicorn of my childhood. Mom always said I had a way with animals and still thinks I should be a vet. So when I saw a big reddish-maroon dragonfly injured on the ground, I decided to help it. That basically meant taking it inside away from the fire ants and look at it twitch feebly. Tim and I got to look at a living dragonfly closely for the first time.
Before our attentions spans could waver the dragonfly started flying around in our living room, but amazingly it kept landing near us. even if it landed somewhere far away it would let us come near it without flying away. We figured it was too wounded to move around much. I remember its favorite place was on top of that lamp coming out of the living room wall. The 3 of us frolicked around the living room for a little while when I got the idea to imitate Chanda calling to Nighthawk by saying "Come!" and holding out my finger. That only worked on Nighthawk occasionally and I figured Tim would get a laugh out of it, but to everyone's amazement, the dragonfly flew from the lamp to the tip of my finger. All 3 of us froze. Tim and I starred at the dragonfly while it looked straight at me and everything else in the room( it had like 20,000 eyes). I think the dragonfly was the first to move. I thought it was a fluke, freak accident, whatever, but It did it again, and it only flew to me. I can't remember who all saw it but it was amazing. My only conclusion was that I had somehow tamed an uncontrollable force of nature. I had rescued a fallen unicorn and bent it to my will.
After two days of pretending to take care of it, the dragonfly recovered and I let the thing go outside again. It wasn't right to keep it inside and once it left I never saw it again. I never fed it anything and I never had a cage for it, but the fact that it actually came when I called made that dragonfly feel more like a pet to me than most arthropods I've owned. Since then, I've never even tried to duplicate that experience, but every time I see a dragonfly I think of the one I let go.