The cold snap was short-lived and it never actually got below the freezing mark. So the insects received merely an inconvenience, not a death blow. That means there are still plenty of mosquitoes airborne to plague every walk stopping-point, but it hasn't stopped me from dutifully monitoring the last blooms on the Hydrangeas. As I scanned the flowers, I noticed a remarkable visitor: a huge... relatively... tree-hole-breeding culicid known as the Elephant or Goliath Mosquito. Toxorhynchites rutilus is the behemoth among our skeeters, and if you regarded these insects as little more than drab annoyances, well, behold a genuine beauty... in fact, a genuine psychedelic beauty. And, happily, a harmless psychedelic beauty. Both the males and females—this one's a guy, as is apparent from the bushiness of his female-detecting antennae—imbibe only nectar, and because their kids dine on culicid larvae, they're doubly great to have around. I spotted the first adult Elephant in mid-August, and, at the time, I wasn't sure how long they'd be around. Now, I know: at least two months.