We had a close encounter with a prehistoric, didn't-know-they-could-get-that-big, dragonfly, we got to watch baby loggerhead sea turtles waddle down the sand and into the ocean, and we got to see several pods of porpoises cruising up and down the beach.
The dragonfly incident was a big scary. I was sitting in the kitchen and the kids were in the living room area watching a movie while Jeff and I my mom were preparing to go shopping when all of a sudden both kids screamed and ran towards me. I looked to see what frightened the kids when I saw this thing that was the size of a bird flying around and making this buzzing sound. I grabbed the kids, ducked under the bar of the counter and yelled for Jeff to come and rescue us. I then realized it was a dragonfly, which was not going to sting or hurt us, but it was so HUGE and kept dive bombing around the living area that it probably would have hurt on impact. Jeff finally came up and he attempted to get it out the door because killing it wasn't an option, it was too big. It dive bombed him once, he hit the floor and then it disappeared. We searched the area we had seen it fly to, but couldn't find it. We finally gave up the search went shopping, we came back briefly to get ready to head down to Wilmington and then left for the rest of the morning/afternoon. When we got back from our Wilmington excursion we came upstairs and there was the dragonfly resting on the floor by the door.
I immediately took out my camera to get a picture but realized that without something else for scale his size couldn't be understood so I tried to get my flip flop as close as I could without setting of the dragonfly.
It should be notes I only where a size 7.5 shoe so this is a big dragonfly.
We grabbed a broom and dustpan and managed to scoop up the dragonfly and release him outside. So we can now rest easy that the dragonfly is not lurking somewhere in the house, He was beautiful, but he was unsettling large.
We also saw several pods of porpoises, not unusual, but usually we see them first thing in the morning when everything is so hazy, not at 4 o'clock in the afternoon when everything is crisp and clear and relatively close, they were beautiful and it is a little creep how close they are to shore, or maybe how deep it gets so close to shore is more like it.
And we ended the night watching some loggerhead sea turtles scoot down the beach to their death. Not really, but knowing that it takes 1,000 eggs to produce 1 adult and that most baby turtles do not survive till adulthood, makes things seem pretty hopeless, but they were cute none the less and watching them head down the beach and take off into the water is amazing. I guess it the whole instinct thing, how they know what do and where to go and they do it on their own. The turtles were released by sea turtles monitors, they were found during a nest analysis as well as from another next down the beach, two of the turtles climbed out of the nest during the day so they captured them and waited until dark to release them to give them the best advantage.
So two days of beach vacation gone, four more days to go!
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