The other day I was sitting on a wide porch in Kansas, letting the heat soak into my aging joints. As I watched, a big flying critter of a type I’d seen before, pushing two inches long and bulky, with a striped, tapering abdomen, came flying up at maximum speed.

It smashed right into the side of the building with an audible whack, turned around, and flew back the way it had come, vanishing in the distance.

Apparently it had accomplished what it came here to do.