Gnarly

It was Dragon City along the Glamorganshire Canal this morning, with numerous Common and Ruddy Darters, several Southern Hawkers, and at least two Golden-ringed Dragonflies hunting in and out of the reed beds. "Just go," said R to me as we arrived. "We'll be fine." So I went, walking fast along the path to the section of canal experience tells me is most likely to offer up a dragon photo or fifty, and leaving R and the Boy Wonder to the ducks and their own devices. By the time I got back, they'd taught each other all about acorns and oaks.

My first thought when this Golden-ring zoomed in and perched on a bit of dead tree was Not on that gnarly old branch!!!, and my second, when I focused on him was Oh, wow....!  As this could well be my only Golden-ringed Dragonfly photo of this season, I'd have preferred it to be more like this one - but it does serve to highlight the short and sometimes violent lives of these dragons, once they leave the water and become airborne. Golden-ringed larvae can take anywhere from two to five years to reach maturity, but this final, breeding stage of their lives will last no more than a few weeks at best. They're top predators within their own order, attacking and predating many other insects including bumblebees and other, smaller dragonflies, but they're also potential prey themselves, and I particularly noticed today that every time a bird flew along the canal, of whatever kind, all the nearby dragons would scatter into cover. Obviously I have no way of knowing what has robbed this individual of half of both his front wings, but this looks far more like the kind of damage inflicted by a bigger creature than something another male of his own kind might have caused.

Today's other big news is the Boy Wonder has reached the Flooring the Adults with Overly Challenging Questions stage of proceedings. Among today's corkers were:

"What's inside my face?" (to his mother over breakfast).

"What is poo?" (to me over lunch). On this topic, see also:
"Where does poo come from?" (Cue explanation of the digestive system).
"Where does poo go when you flush it away?" (Cue explanation of sewers).
"And what happens then?" (Cue explanation of sewage treatment works).
"And what happens then?" (Cue R reaching for his phone and calling up an internet search engine).

"What is helfy?" - this after explaining to me that we can't just eat one kind of thing, even if it's something delicious, but have to lots of different kinds of food, to keep us healthy. (Later, when I tried to get him to repeat this advice to L, and asked what a varied diet makes us, he said, "Mmmm.... happy!")

If he doesn't like the answer you give, he just keeps asking the question, as when he brought me an unripe conker he found in the park, showed me its spiky husk and said "What's inside here?" I explained about the tree, and the seed, and the protective covering. "What's inside here?" he said again, so I explained again. "But what's inside it though?" he tried - clearly thinking that if he rephrased the question he might get a more satisfactory response.

On occasion he can give a pretty good answer himself. Today he was wearing shorts that were a bit big in the waist, and slipped down unless the cord threaded through the elastic was tied in a bow. Which is something he wants to be able to do himself, or at least help with, and being helped by B in the tying of a bow can turn this from a ten-second task into a five-minute performance. At one point, after several abortive attempts, L said "I'm just going to tie a half bow. There. Is that OK?" B, holding up his t-shirt and looking down in disapproval at the waistband of his shorts, replied "Definitely not."

After lunch I was reading a book with him, about a goat who's looking around his farm for something to eat, and I pointed out that in one of the pictures there was a bird - probably intended to represent a house martin - flying towards a nest in which two chicks were waiting open-beaked, with some kind of food. "The parent bird has caught an insect," I said, "and it's flying to its nest to feed the insect to its babies." "To one of its babies," corrected B. "Yes, you're right," I said. "Only one baby will be able to have that insect. The parent bird will have to go away and find another one for the other baby." "Mmm," said B. "I like this bird, because it's jus' petend, you see? It's jus' a picture an' it's petend. But I'm not inchrested in birds..." looking towards the window. "You don't like real live birds?" I asked. "No. Just petend ones." "Why don't you like birds in real life?" "Cos they flap their wings, and..." "And it's a bit scary?" "Yes. An' sometimes they go SQUAWK SQUAWK an' I don' like that cos it's too loud." "I can understand that," I said - while thinking to myself how interesting it was that this two and a half year old child, who has a startlingly vivid imagination and cooks up some extraordinary fantasy games, could articulate so clearly his understanding of the difference between reality and "jus' petend".