I have family that moved to California and every year when I tell them the fireflies are back, I feel like I’m causing them undue soul damage because they remember what they’re missing.
If it makes Paul's heart any less broken (it won't), climate change is taking a toll on them & we see them less & less on the East Coast, for a shorter period of the summer. So even though I live in NYC & occasionally see some, I miss them too.
They’re something I grew up with and took for granted until I moved and never saw them again. I’ve considered a lightning bug tattoo because I miss them so much!
My kids were raised on SESAME STREET. This episode lived on our TiVo (remember TiVo?) and it was played & replayed a million times. We got to see Emilio Delgado in a wonderful play reinterpreting Quixote a few years before the world lost him. I think of him every time I hear of fireflies. 💙
I was a complete tourist dork seeing them again when I was in St. Louis this summer - lightning bugs! Even shot video on my phone in front of strangers.
I know there’s a lot to complain about, but that always got me sad while living in California. The Bay Area can feel like fall for so much of the year- why can’t it have all the elements of a permanent autumn? 😭
Never had 'em as a west coast kid, spent a decade in Chicagoland absolutely delighted beyond all reason by little blinky boys, and then eventually moved back west.
Probably the thing I miss most. (*actually good* hot dogs a close second. )
I misread this as “I miss fighting bugs so much” and was like, whoah! what had Paul F Tompkins been doing in his previous life and why is that something he misses!?
If you’re in an area that should have them, try and set a part of your yard aside that goes untouched. They grow in unkept native brush. I have a wild flower garden I let go crazy and I had so many lightning bugs this year. Their larvae eat slugs, so it’s win win.
I just moved from an apartment building to a house two months ago, and for the first week, I sat in my backyard, watching them buzz around at night. It’s amazingly calming.
We occasionally still them in ones and twos in our backyard here in Indianapolis. Far more seldomly than we used to, though. It's both sad and infuriating. And also I feel guilty about it!
Director Isao Takahata helped introduce many of the uninitiated to that magical feeling of beholding these creatures featured in his animated classic that is one of the most heart warming (and heart crushing) films of all time.
One of the most treasured memories of my life is thirty-five years ago standing on a porch in north GA with an Australian who has never seen them before and was completely taken by surprise. The *magic* of it.
this is why i try to plan my trips back to PA for July/August:
- fireflies
- thunderstorms
- wineberries
- just enough humidity to remind me why i live in LA
Comments
They were pretty good spaceships for smuggling past the Alliance...
It's not right.
Never had 'em as a west coast kid, spent a decade in Chicagoland absolutely delighted beyond all reason by little blinky boys, and then eventually moved back west.
Probably the thing I miss most. (*actually good* hot dogs a close second. )
https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm
- fireflies
- thunderstorms
- wineberries
- just enough humidity to remind me why i live in LA