*********************** The nymph that had perched on the branch for three days without emerging… what became of it?
Late on the third night, I shone a flashlight and saw it crawling higher up the branch, so I thought it was finally ready. But when I checked the next morning, it was nowhere to be found.
Had it successfully become a dragonfly?
Not quite. If it had emerged safely, its exuvia—the empty shell—should have been there, but there was nothing. Then my wife happened to glance at the entrance… There it was, lying lifeless at the doorway.
From the room where it had been kept to the doorway was several meters—a vast distance for a nymph no larger than a little finger. It seems that the night before, it had fallen from the branch and, driven by instinct, crawled toward the outside. After a whole night, it reached the entrance, only to collapse from exhaustion.
We laid its tiny body to rest in the potted grapevine just outside the door.
Counting the remaining nymphs, there were only nine left. Of these, we hope to help at least five safely emerge as dragonflies and return to the sky.