Aurora Damselfly eating

While I've never forgotten that dragonflies are always fierce predators, it occasionally slips my mind that their more slender and gentle-appearing cousins, the damselflies, are, of course, equally formidable hunters. No salads for either group. So I was a little taken aback... but only for a very short amount of time... when I noticed that this Aurora Damselfly, an utterly gorgeous beast with those amazingly banded eyes, was not simply basking on a rhubarb leaf. The guy had deftly snagged a fly of some sort and was, right before my not-so-banded eyes and camera lens, efficiently devouring his prey, which, until the end, remained more or less alive. It was an utterly grisly scene, but, like most of my encounters with predators, large and small, I couldn't turn away, even if it sent an occasional chill up my spine.