Tuesday morning I was woken at about 4 by Savannah, who was pretty sick.  I got her some pills and sent her back to bed.  When will this child sleep through the night!  That afternoon I left for St. Louis.  I stopped at the relatively new Cabelas at the giganto St. Louis Mills mall.  I bought a few minor items, grabbed some fast food for dinner, and went to the MoNEP meeting.  It was a pretty good one, and I learned some things.  I handed over my snake print and showed some fly pics during the show and share.  Afterward I went to Shaw Nature Reserve, only about 30 minutes away.  It was a little tricky navigating in the dark, but James Trager, a staff member there, met me and showed me to my cabin.  I had actually met him about 25 years ago at an ESA meeting.  He's an ant guy.  My bed had sheets but no blanket.  I was a bit cold that night, which is weird for July.  I had forgotten how loud the katydids are down there too.  Wednesday morning I met Lydia, who had recruited me for this gig, and she took me to the building where I met the 8 high school students I would be leading that day.  I gave them the short version of the dragonfly talk and we headed out into the field.  Shaw Nature Reserve is a very large area, with huge prairies and nice wetlands.  I was in heaven!  The weather was overcast and cool, which was blissfully comfortable for us, but terrible for dragonflies.  Nothing was flying.  We spotted most of them perching in the vegetation around the wetlands.  We totaled only 7 species for the day, which I thought was pretty good under the circumstances.  We saw a lot of garter snakes and water snakes, mostly trying to sun themselves.  We saw a lot of area.  The prairies were in great color because of all the flowers.  Some of the other staff were pointing out other insects and plants we would find.  I learned a lot too. 

Spangled skimmer.  This may be the best D-fly pic I've ever taken.  It's hard to tell at this resolution, but every wing vein is crisp.
A scorpionfly.  I hadn't seen one in a long time.  Not sure what the red thingy is.

Bird poop?  It's actually the caterpillar of the giant swallowtail.
Wheel bug.

Look, Mom, no hands!  Paper wasp with macerated caterpillar.

Cloudless sulfur caterpillar.

Prairie blazing star.
The Slaty Skimmer, a new addition to my virtual collection.
Slaty skimmer being eaten by praying mantis.  Predator vs. predator.
Fishing spider.  This is a different species from the one I had as a pet a few weeks ago (now pickled in alcohol).
Banded Pennant, the second new addition to my virtual dragonfly collection.

The kids left at 3:30 and went back to my cabin and took a nap.  It was a long one, but I was well rested afterward.  I had dinner with a bunch of Mo. Dept. of Conservation people that were there for an entomology workshop.  That was a lot of fun because they had collected some really interesting things, and we got to talk about bugs a lot.  They put up blacklights on white sheets that night and attracted a lot of insects.  Most weren't that interesting, at least before I went to bed. 

When we got up in the morning there were a couple of nice imperial moths on one of the sheets.  I put one on a tree trunk and shot the heck out of it.  It was supposed to be a warmer, sunny day, but it started out raining.  We saw no dragonflies at all at first, and things were looking really bad.  Finally, we started seeing some perching on the plants, but only about two species.  We continued around the big wetland, the sun came out, and the dragonflies went absolutely nuts.  They were flying all over, mating and ovipositing.  We started seeing species we hadn't seen the day before (though this was a different group of students).   I photographed a couple of species I had never seen before, and we spotted a few others that we could not confirm, but suspect are additional species.  Our efforts are the first to attempt to survey the dragonflies of Shaw Nature Reserve.  I think we confirmed 10 species: blue dasher, eastern pondhawk, spangled skimmer, widow skimmer, common whitetail, halloween pennant, slaty skimmer, common green darner, banded pennant, eastern amberwing, and black saddlebags.  I'm pretty sure we saw comet darner and red saddlebags, but I wasn't able to photograph those, as they never stopped flying.  There are almost certainly more, as we recorded no clubtails. 
Imperial moth.
5-lined skink.

 On the way out I stopped at a nursery and bought a bunch of prairie plants.  They filled the trunk of the Lil Egg.  I drove home through some horrendous thunderstorms.

Friday morning I went out to John Berghofer's again.  We fished the neighbor's 20-acre lake, which is known for its 5-lb bass.  I caught about 10 bass, but no big ones.  I did catch a couple of catfish that gave me quite a tug, as well as a couple of bluegill.  I caught almost all on a white spinner.  We toured the lodge by this lake.  It's so nice, I won't even take the time to describe it.  From there I went to QU, where Leo and I planted all the prairie plants that were still in my trunk.  Leo brought a bucketful too.  It's really filling in out there, and we are up to 41 species.  I ran some errands and went home.
The lake was covered in a layer of mist when we started. 

Saturday morning I went out to LaBelle for a Camera Club meeting.  They had coffee and delicious muffins.  We socialized a lot, and took pictures of flowers.  I saw a Great Golden Digger wasp that I wanted to shoot, but she took off and didn't come back to her burrow during the lengthy period waited for her.  Nearly all of us had lunch in town.  From there I went to Lowell's.  I gave him a hand straightening out the floating dock, then we fished two rounds of the lake.  I caught four bass and a large crappie—not bad for the middle of the day. 

Some kind of lily.

Sunday morning I read the paper on the back porch while drinking coffee.  Normally, this is a quiet peaceful moment that I cherish.  This time the neighbor's little dog was yapping the whole time.  Stacey made pancakes for breakfast.  I planted a buttonbush and a passionflower vine that I had gotten Thursday.  I took a small amount of brush down to the dump, and brought back a few logs and bricks.  I put the truck away, played musical cars and went indoors for the day. 

An interesting exchange from the afternoon:
Stacey: Boots puked on the bed, but the good news is that he did in on one of Savannah's shirts.
Savannah:  Was it a good one?
Stacey:  Yeah, it was a good puke.
Joe gives Stacey a high five.

Monday I was feeling really lethargic and couldn't get motivated to do much.  I took two naps.  I took Boots to the vet.  He's lost some weight.  He's 13 years old, which means he could have anything from diabetes to hyperthyroidism.  We ran a urine test, but it didn't tell us much.  His kidneys were OK, but he was a bit dehydrated.  With a couple hundred dollars worth of testing, we could probably figure it out, but it's just not worth spending that much on an old cat.  We couldn't do much even if we did know what chronic condition he has.  All we can do is feed him wet adult food and keep an eye on him.

Savannah came home in the late afternoon and was going to go to the State Park with her boyfriend Matt.  I decided to tag along, and loaded the kayak into the truck.  I did hook one nice fish, but lost it as I was reaching for the net.  There were a lot of gar rising and busting little minnows at the surface.  I had one bite, but they're hard to hook well, as their mouths have no soft tissue.  The kids tried swimming for a short time, then Matt caught a couple of fish from shore.  I let him try out the Coyak for a while.  They went on a hike while I kept on fishing.  I got off the lake before sunset as they were finishing up the hike.  They didn't exactly know the way back to their vehicle,  I tried to direct them over the phone, but I had forgotten one new trail. They got semi-lost.  I drove over to their parking lot and went to retrieve them.  I saw the same three deer they did, two does and a nice little buck.  Savannah had always done that trail by bike or skis before.  It feels a lot longer when you're walking!  They were pretty tired, and Savannah was definitely crabby.