Meet the common mayfly (Ephemera vulgata), a fascinating insect found across Europe and parts of Asia that takes the concept of “living in the moment” to a brutal evolutionary extreme. These creatures spend the vast majority of their lives—up to two years—submerged under water as nymphs, buried in tubular mud or sand tunnels at the bottom of ponds and slow-moving rivers. To survive the low-oxygen depths of their muddy burrows, they continuously wave feather-like gills on their abdomen, acting like tiny biological pumps to keep fresh, oxygenated water flowing through their homes. But their transition to the air is where things get truly bizarre. Mayflies are among the only insects on Earth with a pre-adult winged stage called a subimago. They emerge from the water as winged adolescents, fly to nearby bankside vegetation, and molt one final time to reveal their fully mature adult form (the imago). Once they reach this final stage, they have no mouthparts and no digestive system. They literally cannot eat. Destined to live off pure stored energy, they have just a few hours to a couple of days to find a mate before starving. To secure the next generation, males gather in mesmerizing aerial “nuptial dances,” swarming up and down over the water as females fly in to mate mid-air. During my long bicycle touring trip across Sweden and Finland, I rode past countless of these swarms along the lake shores, and was lucky enough to capture on camera this exhausted flyer as it fell from the sky to rest for a few precious minutes.