Excerpt from OF MEN AND MARSHES

The lesser creatures under the marsh ice--the numerous kinds of water bugs and water beetles, the dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, the small crustaceans, the leeches, the mollusks--gradually approach states in which an observer may hardly judge whether they are alive or dead. A motionless specimen from oxygen-deficient water may move when transferred to tap water or it may never move again. Masses of invertebrates may, like fishes, collect at strategic places under the ice. Once, after chopping ice that covered a water hole at a trapping camp, I dipped out several pails of the misnamed water scorpions--harmless but bizarre in appearance and something to see when looked at by the pailful.


From OF MEN AND MARSHES by Paul L. Errington