I love them. I am not a bug fan in general, but I can tolerate the cool ones. And lighting bugs/fireflies are just cool. I spotted a few tonight, in the open space behind my apartment building. Not squadrons of them, but just the few, the brave, living in a generally not ideal firefly neighborhood. The dogs didn't notice, but I did, and it made me ridiculously happy.
I remember being the 5 year old version of my city girl self, being dragged out into Nature by my parents in conjunction with my beloved Uncle Cliff, who was a real nature guy and photographer and fisherman, though he worked a modest day job in a factory in Jersey City. At that point, they had no idea that I was so nearsighted I couldn't SEE the things they pointed at in the distance. It was a "family joke" that I couldn't tell a cow from a horse, oh so funny dumb little city girl! (It was another 4 years before a teacher finally pointed out to them that I was very nearsighted - those cows and horses passing by out the window at 60 mph were all just brown blobs to me.) I might have been a failure at cow spotting, but dammit, I could see lightning bugs! We'd (they'd) catch them in jars with holes punched in the lid, so I could watch them blink on and off, and then we'd let them go. They were, and are, my favorite bugs. Possibly my ONLY favorite bugs.Because they blink on and off! What could be cooler?
They are my magic bugs too. I was thrilled when we moved to the mid-Atlantic and found them again, although I see almost none in the city now. They dont have many in Louisiana where I grew up. When I was in the suburbs I participated in this: https://www.mos.org/fireflywatch/
ReplyDeleteFun, and I actually learned quite a bit about them. I also studied chemiluminescence in the lab- very cool.
Kimmen