Recently at work as I was reaching for my safety goggles I was startled to find a large dragonfly sitting on the paint cabinet in front of me, drenched in gold paint. There are often strange things around the shop -- a machine labelled "brat", signs warning people of the "flaming flying noodles of DOOM" -- but this one was a bit more mystifying than usual. So I asked about it later.

I was told that last summer they had found the dead dragonfly at the bottom of the stairs, and for some reason, perhaps unintentionally, they had saved it. It hadn't been seen for a long time, but recently when we had moved everything around in the shop it had been recovered from behind the stereo. No one really knew why it hadn't been crushed, or thrown out, or destroyed by spilled paint thinner, or all the other things that are more than likely to happen to the carcass of an insect in a busy workshop.

So someone decided to embalm it in gold paint, and now it hangs from a pipe in the ceiling like a mysterious patron deity, almost perfectly preserved, shiny, out of place, inexplicable, and almost unnoticeable, but wonderful all the same.