I found this insect crawling on the ground near the Mississippi River. It was about four inches long. I had never seen one of these before. My research showed that it was a dobsonfly larvae which would normally be underwater. Maybe a bird plucked it out of the water and dropped it. Anyway, a dobsonfly is a large insect that flutters around lights at night much like moths. Although the larve looks very much like a dragonfly body and their names are similar, the two insects are not related to each other. The second picture is a perfectly preserved dragonfly that had died. It is on the small plate to show its size and not because anyone was going to eat it.
Shelley Jones Clark
