I never wanted to be an entomologist, a person who studies bugs. But for the sake of my undergraduate conservation biology class project, I became one.
On day one, I was bestowed with a butterfly net and cyanide jar and instructed to craft a bug collection of twenty different species with various taxonomic groups represented. And so, I went outside and began catching, killing, pining, identifying.
The beetles and bees were easy enough. The spiders were messy. The butterflies were pesky. And the dragonflies were desperately hard to catch. But there was one bug—one beautiful little specimen—that was impossible to find. Nobody in my class had found one, but it was the bug I wanted most.
The Dobson fly.
These had massive triangular wings angling across their backs and were able to camouflage into the bark of trees. When they flew, it was like a song and when they walked, it was a dance. I don’t know how to describe how exceptional Dobson flies are except to say… these bugs have personality.
I was absolutely taken with the idea of finding a Dobson Fly for my collection. It would be the central character, the magnum opus, the grand finale…
Every day, I scoured the trees that grew outside the lab. I walked miles into the woods checking the undersides of leaves and branches along the trail. I examined wood piles, stream banks, mossy knolls, and every tree I could see… but I could not find my Dobson Fly.
And then it was the night before the due date. Or rather, it was 2am in the lab and I had just finished identifying my final Drosophila. I was one bug short. One Dobson fly short. I was disappointed and tired. And I decided to go to bed.
In the darkness outside, I could hear crickets singing against the backdrop of the laughing river and whispering trees. As I came to my cabin door, a strange thought flickered through my mind, as brief and bright as a firefly. Look.
I looked. In the space between my feet and my front door, there was my Dobson Fly.
She was beautiful. Her glossy wings folded into the perfect triangle, her legs strutting their style in the beam of my flashlight. She had been sent waltzing onto my path at the perfect moment, the moment that meant the most.
“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory…”
(Ephesians 3:20).
Rachel G. Jordan | Christian Marine Biologist 
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