Page 103 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

DRAGONFLY DANCES

By Judy Grahn

As a child without television, phone, or any electronic distractions, in complete freedom during the

long summer days when my parents were at work, I asked questions of wild life. I lay on the ground

eye-­‐to-­‐eye with fighting beetles and clashing pairs of praying mantis. I knew where the black widow

spiders, the horned toads, and the crawdads all lived. I brought fearsome red fire ants home in a jar of

sand to watch them replicate their home tunnels, to gape at their amazing labor of moving and

hauling, building and cooperating. I watched them clean out their house and carry their dead above

ground. I also knew how dangerous they could be; a toddler had to be hospitalized after getting

trapped on one of their big sprawling mounds in a lot near our home. I had dropped my Levis to the

ground more than once, shrieking with the pain of a red ant stinging my knee. But living close to them

as they were safely encased in the glass jar, I was learning to love them, as well.

Asking questions is how I came to closely watch

Mollie, the wild cat in our neighborhood, in her

hunt for the grasshoppers and mice that fed her. I

saw how she swallowed a mouse until only the tail

dripped down her chin and then allowed it to slowly

slither into her slender inexorable maw. My nine-­‐

year-­‐old self laughed until my sides hurt over this

sight of the tail dripping out of her mouth.

As I trailed around behind wild Mollie, wanting to know her habits, I also wanted her to reach out to

me. She never did this, though she did give presents to a neighbor dog. A medium-­‐sized young collie

had been tied to a wire clothesline by neighbors who owned him. He could run up and down the yard,

his leash sliding along the line as he barked angrily at everything that came into his view. Not much did,

on those long hot nearly silent days. The first indication I had that animals reason and have compassion

came from watching how the little grey cat lurked around the building near the collie’s confinement,

with a dead mouse in her mouth. She would wait until the dog was at the other end of the big yard,

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