Party Elm and Wild Dogs

Morning walk in the Woods from the SW Gate today at 9:30. Marvelous with boots to walk along in shallow yellow tea-colored water. Water still present before SW post #2 @ 100m.
I watched a small (bathtub-sized) patch of sunlit water alive with wrigglers.. and one rapidly feeding dytiscid or hydrophilid larva.. a water tiger.. near the same place I had previously watched a similar assemblage at the west end of the East West trail. Until now adult mosquito density has been surprisingly low or moderate.. but that is getting ready to change. In the next week to ten days there will be clouds of adults in there.
I walked down to the dam then up to East Pond and south along the Big Trees trail. I approached a yearling doe who steadfastly was looking south away from me and I was downwind. It did not run but was alert and listening intently southward adjusting its ears. Eventually it moved along and I discovered quickly why it was not concerned about me. Two or three wild dogs came bounding up through the brush barking at me. I yelled back and ran towards them and they ran away.. a dirty yellow lab and german shepherd and maybe a third.
On my way out I noticed a group of hackberry emperor butterflies. They were lining the trunk of an elm dying with dutch elm disease. Closer inspection, the tree was loaded with insect life. 47-50 hackberry emperors on the bottom 15 feet of trunk height and easily that many more in the next 15 feet up. One Polygonia comma butterfly, Alaus the eyed elaterid, one armored red brown Polistes wasp focussed on one attractive crevice in the elm bark, perhaps 40-50 pretty picture wing Tephritid flies fluttering their wings in courtship, a couple of green Calliphorid flies, a muscid, one Delphina picta fly, a few Camponotus ant foragers, smaller flies like very miniature houseflies.
The elm was ten feet west of tagged tree #398. Like one happy bar scene all species were closely intermingling with no alarms. Tree disease probably producing an alcoholic slimy flux or fermented odor.
All along the walk, white Catalpa flowers rested on the sodden brown leaves from their tree marking a round pool of light white by which all the Catalpa can be found.