There are no lightning bugs in California, at least to my knowledge.
The name is really "firefly", but we never called them that as kids. Growing up as I did in coal country in eastern Pennsylvania, warm summer nights were spent one of two ways: either chasing lightning bugs or chasing the other kids with flashlights. Either way, it involved illumination of one form or another.
Wikipedia, that bastion of higher learning on the Internet (where we are all Ph.Ds, and most of the woman are double-Ds), tells me that fireflies are "conspicuous for their crepuscular use of bioluminescence to attract mates or prey." That's fancy talk for they glow. And to be honest, they attracted kids. I don't think we were prey, exactly...no one ever made a giant lightning bug movie in the 50s, as far as I know.
I can remember seeing them cross a field, slow and languid in their movement, their tails blinking on and off like so many tiny yellow twinkle lights. It was like a starfield on earth. "Lightning" was a misnomer: their glow was soft and slow, not hard and shocking like a bolt of lightning. They were kind of big and kinda brown and they smelled funny. We'd beg our moms for jelly jars and poke holes in the tin lids for air and then run around with these glass engines of destruction and scoop them up, taking them home for the night. They always died in those jars. In the morning we'd have a pile of dead bugs in the bottom of the glass container, smelling like the buggy creatures they were.
I don't know why we caught them summer after summer, knowing they'd die like that. I guess it was one of the particular "flavors" of the season, like the soft ice cream we bought from Mr. Softee when his brightly-lit truck--another firefly--made the turn onto our street and worked its way down to the clusters of kids waiting with their tight little fists wrapped around quarters or dimes. We had to beg our moms for them, too. We were just as attracted to that bright light that moved slowly down the street as we were to the bugs that flew around our yards and lingered near the honeysuckle each night. If the lighting bugs had their own theme song like Mister Softee did, it would have been even better.
Gar, We have loads of lightning bugs. They are out every night and seem to be duplicating by the minute. It's only the beginning of summer. I'd send you some in a jar but they'd be dead by the time you'd get them. Oops.
We collected them too. I don't know why either. We were kids. Did we ever have to justify or explain doing anything?
Posted by: Laurel Smith | June 25, 2011 at 12:20 PM