Catching insects

“I collected my first dragonfly in a mountain meadow far from water and we were both enthralled by it. It was very hard to catch, but it was also amazingly beautiful. I knew I needed to catch some more. So, my dad found a lake an hour away and off we went! I was so happy with my haul on the first trip (10 species!) that my dad took me back a few weekends later. And again. And again! There wasn’t much he could do at the lake, so he’d watch the dragonflies while I hunted and we’d talk about the bugs we saw all the way home.”

“My sister and I loved them! Like most kids, we’d run around the yard collecting them and putting them into jars. My aunt would poke holes in the lids for us and we’d take our glowing jars to bed with us, staring at the beetles until we fell asleep. Of course we’d wake up with a jar full of dead bugs the next morning, but that never seemed to detract from the magic of the experience.”