Fireflies!

My fascination with fireflies probably started when I was about five years old and learned of their existence when I got a Glow Worm toy.

What was so cool to me is that the back un-velcroed and there was a tube that lit up when you squeezed it. I loved using it as a flashlight. Seeing/catching fireflies has always been on my bucket list, so when Juls said she would take us hunting, I was thrilled! She warned us it was still very early in the season for them, that they hadn't seen any out yet, but that one of her cub scouts had found one earlier that day, so there was hope. She took us back to the park we had been at earlier that day, and we found a few! Coolest park ever... geodes and fireflies! The whole time we were chasing them down trying to catch one this song by The Mills Brothers was playing in my head.

They were as amazing and magical as when I was a child I had imagined them to be. They were like elusive little fairies, there one minute, then gone the next. They shone like glitter just above the tall grass. They looked slow moving kind of hovering in one area until you got near enough to catch, then they would just be gone. There were only a few at the park so Juls took us down a trail near their house that goes by a pond, and there were more. We ran up and down trying to catch one. I finally did, but kind of squished it, and as it lay in my hand with it's light flickering as it died, I tried to get J and Juls to clap to save it, but they wouldn't, and it died.

Each night we went out looking for them, and each night there were more out. Juls said that early summer there were hundreds of them, and it was a much more impressive sight, but we felt very lucky just to get to see them at all, especially this early in the year.

Everyone I have talked to said they were really ugly bugs, but I didn't think so. I am not fond of anything touching my skin, but I didn't even mind these little guys. They are only about an inch long, and it is the white part of their rump that has the chemical reaction and glows... even after they are dead.

The ones we caught glowed this greenish yellow color, but we did see some that glowed more orange and pinkish. It was pretty neat, and they are by far the coolest bugs I have ever seen. I am sure R&J got some good laughs watching J and I chasing and trying to catch, "just one more!"