Friday, August 10, 2007
Fireflies
I went outside last night just before it got dark and saw fireflies. I hadn't seen any in a couple of years or more, but there they were, eight or ten of them, moving away from my yard and flying over the neighbor's lawn. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of summer evenings at my grandmother's house, and it seemed to me that her yard was always full of fireflies. My sister and I would chase them. If we caught one, we'd hold it in our closed hand and peep in to look at them. Now and then we'd keep one in a mayo jar with holes punched in the lid, but that never worked out well. Seeing the fireflies last night took by surprise and took me back in time. For about a tenth of a second I could almost remember what it was like to be a kid instead of a old geezer who was outside to make sure his pickup windows were rolled up.
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10 comments:
We call them lightning bugs here in the northeast. My yard is always full of them in the summer time, twinkling away in the darkness Do you suppose they're tiny time machines, whisking us back to a better time?
We called them lightning bugs here in North Carolina also. I haven't seen them in years around here. Don't know why. As a child, admittedly a long time ago, the yard was full every night during this time. I like the "tiny time machine" analogy. It would sure be nice to find them again.
We called them lightning bugs, too, sometimes. Never called them glow worms, but I did like the Mills Brothers' song.
I'm another one who vividly remembers chasing lightning bugs as a kid. They also make me nostalgic because I remember seeing so many of them when we'd be out walking in the evenings with our kids when they were little.
Glowworms are other biolummers, iinm. You know, I spent my youth sporadically looking for information on what fireflies ate. It's indicative of my middle age that I faintly remember finally finding out, but no longer remember.
Whatever they ate, it wasn't what we put in those jars.
I haven't seen lightning bugs in years, but your post briefly took me back to my childhood... and I thank you for that!
We call them lightning bugs in Kentucky, too, and we have lots of them. I used to catch them as a kid just as you describe, but my mother stopped us from putting them in a jar. She said they would die.
We don't have lightning bugs here in the desert, but I have fond memories of them as a child in Missouri. Of course, we have practically NO mosquitos, so it kind of balances out.
All the mosquitos are here on the Texas Gulf Coast.
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