Dragonfly Fishing... A Short Story

When my age was 9 years, there was one scariest day of my life. It was the day that I caught dragonflies by myself. No one taught me how to do it, I just figured it out by myself. During that time, we lived a very poor family. There were no games for me to play, also no television to watch. Our house did not have many things, but that did not stop me from finding interesting things to do.

So one fine day after the school finishes, I was just sitting around beside a drain not very far from my house. I was looking at the drain water flowing very fast after the rain. Then I saw colorful flying things that made me excited. "Oh Oh cute tiny dragonflies!". I waited till one of them flew near me and then I tried to catch it with my hands but failed.

"I need a glue and a fishing rod", I thought to myself and suddenly I remembered jackfruit. There was a jackfruit tree in front of our house. We always enjoyed eating jackfruit from that tree. But I hated every moment cutting it and every time my mother would ask me to help her cut the fruit. Jackfruit has a sticky latex and it was super difficult to clean. I have to put oil and soap for so long to clean the latex from my hands and worst if I got it on my shirt, I just need to throw my clothes, it can never be removed from my shirt which made me hate the work too much.

So, this triggered me an idea for my dragonfly hunting. I quickly ran to my house. I took 1 piece of the broom made from the coconut leaf, took a knife and poke the jackfruit. Its latex came flowing out so I took that one piece of the broom piece and covered the end tip with that latex. "Okay my fishing rod is ready", I thought to myself while running happily to the drain. Before that, I took a covered jar from the kitchen. "Must keep them somewhere after I catch them". I was confident I can catch it.

When I reached the drain, I saw many dragonflies on the bushes beside the drain. So colorful and so I began my dragonfly fishing. My theory worked, it was so easy to fish those dragonflies when I touched any one of them, it would immediately stick to the latex. So I then carefully placed them inside the jar. I managed to catch at least 20 of them. There were many colors of them. I practically caught almost all colors that I can get. There were the red, blue, green, yellow, and orange dragonflies. I felt so happy and proud of myself, "I must show Mama my catch", I ran happily towards my house.

"Mama Mama Mama look at my catch today!" I showed my mother who was cooking in the kitchen, my covered jar full of the dragonfly. To my surprise... my mother scolded me "What have you done?!! Fast release them! You are torturing those animals! If not they will come at night and haunt you!"

I looked at my mother with wide eyes and with utter shock. And then I ran outside quickly opened the jar and tried to release them. To my horror, some of them already died. I started crying... I felt so guilty of torturing and murdering them and for few nights after that, I had difficulties to sleep due to my guilty conscience.

That was the end of my one day story of dragonfly fishing. I hope you enjoyed my short story of 'Dragonfly and Me'. I have promised myself to never do such things again.

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This morning, I received such a pleasant surprise from my colleague Sharon. As I opened my office room door and about to settle down in my office, she came and gave me colorful plastic dragonflies. She said, "Here you are, this is for you". I was jumping with joy. I fixed them on my bamboo tree.. walaaa so nice right! It just brings me back that memory of my dragonfly fishing day.

Take Care Everyone and Stay Blessed. Don't Be Naughty Okay :)

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Yours truly,

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