A Very Unusual Encounter With A Dragonfly

Last Year in England...

I was out with family eating at a restaurant when I noticed a gorgeous view off to the side of the parking lot. I didn't have a decent camera with me, but I had my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. I put the camera in manual mode and tried to get a couple of nice shots of a lake and the surrounding vegetation.

As you can see, it is quite a lovely scene. I took a few shots and stood back.

You Won't Believe What Happened Next

Okay, awful clickbait line. But anyway, I actually was pretty amazed by what was about to happen. We hadn't noticed before, but there was a dragonfly sitting there quietly, hanging out on the fence that we were leaning on.

He was totally just chilling there. So still that we didn't even see it to start with. Since the little guy didn't appear too startled by our presence, I went ahead and took a closer look:

Surprisingly enough, it didn't even budge even after I got quite close to it. But that is not even the weirdest part of this story! A few seconds later, it flew away over the lake, then came back and landed in the same spot. Then it hovered above the fence for a few seconds and landed again.

A Dragonfly With Apparently No Self-Preservation.

Of course I wasn't about to try to hurt it. It seemed geniunly curious about me and my phone. I don't know what gave me the idea, but I decided to reach out my hand into the air, as if to say, hey, land here!

I was mostly playing around of course, because by this time I was at least 5 feet away from it. To our astonishment, the dragonfly flew over to me and landed right on my finger!

I slowly turned my phone toward it and took the above photo. Everyone was laughing and a bit in disbelief. After it sat there for a while, I walked over to the edge of the fence and sort of tilted my hand toward one of the wooden posts. It flew up about 6 inches, then landed back on the post.

Surely it was a fluke, but....

After it sat there for a while, I said to the others, "What are the odds that it will do it again?"

Everyone just shrugged, so I went ahead and gave it another try. This time I stood back even further from the fence. I stuck out my hand toward the fence. I held it there for about 20 seconds, then once again; it flew right over to my finger!

I went ahead and took another couple of photos with my phone, but this time Amanda had to get into the action and took some shots with her iPhone. Look how close that she is getting to it. This is the most tame insect that I have ever come across.

I have a theory, but it may be complete BS. Right before this happened, I had just left a 10 day silent meditation retreat. During this retreat, you are not allowed to harm any being, not even the ants on the ground. At the retreat location, there are lots of animals all around. After about the 5th day of the retreat, all of the animals are getting really close to the humans. They seem to be able to sense that you mean them no harm! I was continuing to have this reaction from animals for quite some time after I left the retreat. There really must be something to it!