TALE of TWO DAMSELFLIES

On my last day of visiting my daughter, we went down to the lake to find today’s blip and found the prettiest pink flowers growing on vines on the top of the water – sprinkled among the water lilies. It took a bit of waiting, but finally a damselfly posed on one of the pink flowers.

Most interesting of all, we also spotted what appeared to be an exoskeleton of a damselfly attached to another pink flower. (Please check Flickr to see this.) I’d never heard that they shed their outer layer, and hadn’t ever seen another empty body shell. Is it possible that some predator insect killed this damselfly and then withdrew the insides of its body?