But now let us return to our funny larva that lives at the bottom of the pond. It stays down there, eating and growing and moulting, for nine or ten months or even longer; then something very wonderful happens.
It suddenly feels a great desire to get up to the top of the pond.
It climbs up a weed or a stick until it is clear out of the water.
Then its skin splits down the back for the last time, and out there pulls itself, not a larva, but a weak-looking dragon fly, with soft and flabby little wings.
Now is its hour of danger, and now is the time for such birds as like the taste of young dragon flies to help themselves.
Catbirds seem to have a special fondness for these helpless insects, and have been known to eat them before the flabby little wings had grown stiff.
If the birds do not find the newly emerged dragon fly, it remains motionless an hour or so, but it does not remain unchanged.
Its wings stretch out and harden.
Bright metallic colors begin to play over them and over its body; and all at once—off it darts, away and away, glittering in the sunshine, a swift, beautiful winged creature.