Humidity?
I'd never seen them until I was in my early 20s? and driving through the midwest/south with Mr. B. We don't have them in California, I don't think.
Excellent question, excellent post. I have had nights when my backyard was lit up, and I don't know why it is so rare. Gonna check in back right now.
Aw crap, I think Bob and I fucked up a routine or something.
Yeah, this park is always full of them. It's a hilltop, which might have something to do with it.
I didn't know they weren't on the West Coast. They're New World only, right? Not in Europe at all?
The cutest thing possible is a kitten chasing a firefly. Actually, to be precise, that's the cutest thing possible involving at most one kitten.
Evolution has endowed male lightning bugs with the ability to light up. I bet they're better at math, too.
Actually, upon further Google review, it looks like female fireflies also often light up, but I bet they aren't as aggressive about it.
They're New World only
I don't know about Europe, but they've got lots of them in Korea in the summertime. There are festivals where kids fly them, on a thread.
Actually, upon further Google review, it looks like female fireflies also often light up, but I bet they aren't as aggressive about it.
I believe that female fireflies sometimes lie when they light up, signaling as if they are a type of firefly they are not. Then when the wrong kind of male comes flying up, the female eats him. Yum!
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en507/papers_1997/stous.html
We don't have them in California, I don't think.
Really? Weird. They're a constant presence during summer nights down here.
The whole "bugs that light up" thing? It sounds like a weird idea
Not to Big Tobacco.
Really? Weird. They're a constant presence during summer nights down here.
Yeah, I've never seen them anywhere west of the Rockies.
Truly, I doubt that there has ever been a better opening for a smartypants display of firefly facts than "it looks like female fireflies also often light up, but I bet they aren't as aggressive about it."
It's even called "aggressive flash mimicry", just to rub it in.
There's also a crawling worm that lights up, a different species I think. It was fairly common in Oregon. IIRC it was multilegged like a centipede.
In some places a whole tree of fireflies will light up synchronically. A very powerful effect, they say, especially if you're not on drugs but fragile and susceptible to drug flashbacks.
The fresh-water burbot has more and better vitamin D in its body than the cod, to which it is related. It's also a tasty fish (also called an eelpout) but people around here scorn it, just as they scorn carp.
At the music camp I went to in New Mexico in the summers, they'd take us on a night hike to a waterfall where we could see fireflies, but that's the only time I saw them when I was growing up. Now having lived in Chicago and Virginia, it's a totally different experience--in NM, you were lucky if you saw a dozen in half an hour. Here, they swarm around park paths and whatnot, dozens flashing at a time. Definitely a humidity thing.
They have a word for them in German, so I'm not sure they're unknown. Google certainly implies they're there.
We used to have a tree that would light up Xmas on a summer evening.
I grew up out East, and was struck with delight when my neighbor in Los Angeles planted a shrub whose purple flowers drew daily visits from hummingbirds. My wives of past and future were each raised in the West (New Mexico and L.A. respectively), and I got to see the looks of utter joy when each saw fireflies for the first time. At a wedding in Wisconsin, wife next was almost lost in a cornfield on a crepuscular chase after the will o'wisps.
Growing up in St Louis, these things were everywhere during the summer. I would catch as many as I could in a jar and the chemical company my dad worked for paid a dime each for fireflies. Apparently they would chop off the glowy parts and put them in a centrifuge to extract something or other valuable.
A dime each??
Are you sure your dad wasn't just telling you fanciful stories, and paying you himself?
10: And they have them in Japan as well. Hence the title of the saddest animated movie ever.
I pay neighborhood kids two bits each for the back ends of hummingbirds.
Harder to catch, so higher rate.
Almost 10 years ago, there were a couple guys here in Pgh studying bioluminescence as a medical tool - essentially, inject half the glowy stuff into a tumor, then spray the other half onto it once the patient's cut open, and cut out whatever glows.
Anyway, to raise research funds (and, I suspect, to raise their profile), they were selling water guns with vials of the glowy stuff. I got a pair for me & my sister for Xmas and we had a quick, but fun game of glow-in-the-dark water guns.
Fireflies were everywhere in my hometown. Delightful summer nights. You would catch them in your hand and watch them blink. We were also on the monarch butterfly migration route. Only the best insects for us!
I often wish the bugs that live in my apartment were fireflies. I want bugs that make the atmosphere more idyllic, not more subtly irritating.
Especially the colony of ants that fell into my bathtub on Saturday. I'm very lucky I was there at the time so I could spend 20 minutes focusing completely on killing them all. I can't even imagine what it would have been like if they were crawling all over the place while I was away. It was very odd.
26: m/ke, all those "moon landings" etc. are filmed in a studio in L.A. A guy I met in a bar knew the cousin of the guy who did some of their janitorial work. These are up-and-coming special-effects guys picking up odd jobs with NASA, porn studios, Kim Jong Il, etc., while they wait to hit the big time.
Fireflies need dampness, I think. They aren't very common here, so maybe they don't like cold winters. We have tons and tons of dampness.
A few years ago, I was driving through Iowa with my dad. The motel we stopped was adjacent to a cornfield. At dusk, we walked the length of the field, marveling at the fireflies therein.
Oh, man, migrating monarch butterflies are weird. I was sitting in a park with my mother and sister one autumn a couple of years ago, looking out over the Hudson, with a strong wind blowing from the north, and monarchs just kept whipping by, about one every thirty seconds to a minute; one would pass, then a minute later another, then another, for as long as we were sitting there. I don't know that it was migration related, but I've never seen that many butterflies all headed the same direction.
A strong contender for my favorite song. Fireflies make me dizzy with delight. They're as amazing as stars.
24: Well, I've seen 5,000-10,000 coots gathering for their annual migration. That's a lot of coots, and they're way bigger than butterflies. But no one cares because coots are not "pretty". Looksists.
Some people think that giant flocks of migrating snow geese are pretty, but that's just because the geese are white, which is thought to be pretty because it's associated with purity, thus making it sexist.
When I was at Ft. Campbell, KY in the winter of 1970, vast flocks of Starlings would roost all around the ranges, or fly over in processions that could take hours to pass. Many millions of birds. Flying over hundreds of bored young men with loaded automatic weapons in their hands, but no one ever shot. Court Martial offense to shoot at anything without cause or order.
I wonder what it is that makes good firefly habitat.
An unobstructed view from the bar.
An unobstructed view from the bar.
Funny. I was sitting in a bar playing trivia last night (did you know electricians use ferrets to run wire through "large conduits"? I did not), and this lone firefly kept trying to find its way out, glowing intermittently the whole time. I tried to help it. I decided to assume it got out eventually, since it wouldn't let me catch it.
When I was a child, there were fireflies in the Bosnian mountains, but I don't remember any in Belgrade. I think that they are only found in the southerly parts of Europe. I have never seen any north of Provence.
36: Don Marquis, whose poetry and commentary are largely forgotten nowadays, used to write poems from the point of view of a free-verse poet who was reincarnated as a cockroach.
Google fails me in seeking the specific poem I'm looking for, but archy (the poet-roach whose poems were all lowercase because he couldn't manipulate the shift key on a typewriter) recounts being trapped in an elevator with a human who tried to step on him.
archy points out that his attacker would have mourned the misfortune of a butterfly found in a city elevator. From this incident, archy draws the following lesson for Marquis (whom he refers to as "boss"):
be pretty, boss
and let who will be clever
for a thing of beauty
is a joy forever
I wonder if, among the unfogged literati, there are any other Don Marquis fans. The Unfoggetariat is probably more likely to recognize the verse that Marquis is parodying from Charles Kingsley:
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song.
The first fireflies I ever saw were in Assisi.
I guess this song is appropriate. Though the connection with the video is beyond me.
25: I watched that movie years ago (in fact, I had to buy it to watch it). Haven't seen it since. Still, the images stay with you.
Feldspar, I love that song. I walk around singing the verse that starts at 2:18 all the time.
You won't be happy with me.
But give me one more chance.
You won't be happy anyway.
Why do we still live here?
In this repulsive town.
All our friends are in New York
We had fireflies all over where I lived in New England [Boston, NW CT, the Berkshires] and I remember them in the south of England, as well. Haven't seen one since I got to CA. [Adding to list of things I miss from the NE.]
Glad to hear it, Megan.
I sing the one beginning at 0:58. Because I'm a feminist sucker.
The few times I've seen fireflies were near creeks in Austin. I never saw any growing up in California.
I seem to remember clapping lightning bugs between my palms and then smearing their luminescent goo across my skin. It didn't taste very good, IIRC.
Here's some good reading on fireflies, made slightly more entertaining by knowing that one of the scientists quoted has such gloriously poor social skills that his slapping-offense:social interaction rate is steady near 1:1 over a decade, and should you ever meet him at a party -- and he adds a fun element of unpredictability at such -- you'll know him even before the inappropriate comments start coming by the several fingers missing due to a pyromania so childlike in its wide-eyed intensity as to be downright charming.
Hey, I don't know any real celebrities, so this is what I have to resort to when I want to not-quite-name-drop.
Aside from all that, I have very fond memories of catching loads of fireflies in Ball mason jars in the Alabama red-clay back yard of a childhood friend. So maybe that's a data point for the "One! Of! Humidity?" hypothesis.
Fireflies were all over the New Hyde Park place on Long Island in the 40's and 50's. The evenings were magical. Not so much in Alabama later on, and I haven't seen any in L.A.
50: I believe that I've met Pes/kin in the article. It wouldn't strike me that he's the psycho one.
I wonder if, among the unfogged literati, there are any other Don Marquis fans.
But of course.
Generally speaking, the highest number of firefly species are found in warm, humid areas of the world. Some species, however, are found in very arid regions of the world. In these arid regions, larvae and adults can be readily found following rains. The greatest number of firefly species (highest species diversity) are found in tropical Asia and Central and South America.
This page also mentions the conundrum of none in the Western US.
you'll know him even before the inappropriate comments start coming by the several fingers missing due to a pyromania so childlike in its wide-eyed intensity as to be downright charming.
This is a man I must invite to every party I'll ever host. He may not be m-fun, but he sounds like fun.
I read about fireflies in all kinds of books when I was a kid, but I never saw them until I was about 24. I couldn't really believe my eyes; it was like seeing fairies or leprechauns.
People not seeing lightning bugs as kids?!
Wow, who knew.
The Chicago suburb I grew up in was full of lightning bugs. I get them here in my backyard too. I'm thinking they seem to be related to mosquitoes - not like brother and sister but where they thrive. It could be the moisture.
I can verify that at one time a lab paid for lightning bugs. This was the late 60's and they were researching bioluminescence. I think they invented the glowstick. We were paid a nickel, I think, for each frozen lightning bug. True story. We'd collect maybe a hundred a night and my Mom drove them to the lab once a week. She didn't like the baggie full of frozen lightning bugs in the freezer but money was money.
A jar full of lightning bugs was a fun nightlight. You could rub the tails on your skin for glowing tattoos too but that was kinda mean.
That was back when a nickel was worth a nickel. Tripp is almost a hundred years old. You could buy a beer and a sandwich for 10 cents.
You got that right Sonny. "Shave and a haircut, two bits!"
Do people even know what two bits is anymore? They probably think it has something to do with computers.
Most beautiful thing I've ever seen was from the bottom of a hollow in Missouri on a clear night. The entire hollow was full of fireflies, up to the horizon far above us, where the stars began. You couldn't quite tell where that border was, and the entire world shimmered all around us on a backdrop of dark navy velvet.
Do people even know what two bits is anymore?
Price of a shave and a haircut.
I remember rubbing the tails on skin but I always thought it was mean, too, and gross, and didn't participate.
I think they are less common in NC than they used to be, no?
They're less common everywhere, I think, because of declining wetlands from sprawl and lowering of the water table.
Back in Vermont for my dad's memorial service a few years ago, my gf (now my wife) and I walked from the inn where we were staying to the old cemetery up the road. It was a warm, quiet night, and there were fireflies flickering all around the gravestones. Not the subtlest symbolism, but it was comforting at the time. The last time we went back, our girls got to see fireflies for the first time, which made them giddy with delight. And so it goes.
They're less common because of all the damn kids who caught them and sold them to labs, you mean.
I was wondering what all those mason jars were doing in Labs' basement.
He grinds them up and turns them into glow-monkey chow.
"Here, kids. Bring your fireflies into my basement. I'll pay you . . . a nickel!"
The lightning bugs, not the mason jars. But imagine if glow-monkeys could eat glass!
Or maybe experiments in whether phosphorescence affects cock growth.
Maybe he grinds the kids, too.
But imagine if glow-monkeys could eat glass!
Glühaffen können Glas essen; es tut ihnen nicht weh.
Maybe he grinds the kids, too.
To make his bread, no doubt. And he keeps it for himself.
"Grind" is pidgin Hawaiian for "eat": "OK, let's grind breakfast!"