When I was gardening in the East Bay last weekend I spotted this dragonfly seemingly poised for an instant enjoying a blackberry. With great caution I crept up close enough to photograph it but then through the viewfinder realized that this particular insect had for some time past ceased to number among the living. I wonder how it came to die in such a picturesque position, as if laid out by an entomologist. Probably the blackberries are toxic. That was my first thought. But my fellow gardener suggested the opposite: that the dragonfly died in an ecstasy of blackberry enjoyment.