Did you used to collect lightening bugs as a kid?

[terrya]

On summer nights, did you used to do this? Get a jar with holes punctured on the top...and go outside, on a summer night, when it was dark?

I remember doing this...but now, I don't know exactly WHY we did...

Terry, a slow day at work and drowning in nostalgia from my long departed youth.

[BigMcLargehuge]

1. We never had them in New Bedford when I was growing up

but have scads of them in New Hampshire. I will hunt them with Little McLargehuge this coming summer.

[flowomo]

25. I grew up in Everett and never saw one either until:

see my post below for the story (if you're interested)

[Midlodemocrat]

2. Yup. and my kids do it every summer.

They love to catch fireflies/lightning bugs.

[kick-ass-bob]

3. I did.

Why? Because it was cool. Why was it cool? uhhhhhhh....

Note: I never squished them to see their lights stay lit - I was pissed if I saw anyone do that.

[Arkansas Granny]

12. Yes, it was cool. I remember how horrified I was the first time I

saw someone squish one. I could never do it. They were just too neat to do something like that to them. I still enjoy watching them to this day (I don't catch them anymore, though).

[HeeBGBz]

31. A rite of spring

My siblings and I would compete who would capture the most.

Would bring the jar inside for a nightlight. Bad news for the lighty bugs though.

I'm sure there were many legless June Bugs who came home with tales of Monsters with Strings, as well.

[indigo32]

4. Yes

We had a nice quiet neighborhood we could run around in at dusk, and we played tag and caught fireflies some nights. Just put them in a jar to look at them. Let them out later.

I had a pretty good childhood, aside from medical issues. We'd go into a friends house, when it was empty, and crawl into her moms bed and scare ourselves silly from the natural noises a house made. We lived on a lake and could swim (though it was very weedy).

[redqueen]

5. Awwww... yeah we did.

It was such fun... running around in the warm evening air, trying to catch them as they blinked then became nearly invisible again.

What ruined it for me was my aunt. She'd rip off the glowy parts and smear them on her clothes. Made me cry and run into the house every time. :(

[swimboy]

6. Sure did.

And we'd pick slugs off the cellar door and float them across the fish pond on jar lids.

[Arkansas Granny]

14. Slugs and fishponds. You really knew how to live it up!

[swimboy]

21. Life was good at Grandma's house.

I miss those times.

[DanCa]

7. In entomology class yes as a kid no. I felt sorry for them actually.

Imagine getting hunted to down and being put in a glass jar.

[Arugula Latte]

8. When I lived in Ohio we did.

Loved it!

[fishnfla]

9. I'm over 40 and I still do!

<there I said it>:hide: :hide:

Every April we are swarmed with them in the brush out back. Me and the youngs 'uns gear up just after sundown, butterfly nets, jars, the whole works.

[LaraMN]

10. Yes, and we had alot of them in our yard this summer.

We put them in jars and then let them go. My son thought they were toys.

[RedCloud]

11. My folks couldn't afford electricity so yeah!

The hard part was when they wanted to run the fridge...having to collect those lightning bolts!

[aePrime]

13. They don't exist around here

I think I've only seen them once in my entire life.

[TX-RAT]

15. Oh yea

Lightning bugs in a jar, cicadas under your hat, june bugs on a string.

[Rich Hunt]

16. must be from Chicago...

I figured that, because Chicago kids collected them all the time.

When I left Chicago, people told me that 'lightning bugs' was more of a local expression...not sure how many people outside of Chicago or Illinois use it - maybe it's midwestern as well?

[terrya]

17. I'm from downstate Illinois originally...

Decatur, to be exact. I've lived in Chicago for 11 years now.

And I wish I had spelled "lightning" correctly in my post.

[Reverend_Smitty]

18. it was one of my favorite summer activities

which is kind of funny because I was pretty much petrified of all other bugs...something about glowing butts that make them less scary. Every now and then when I'm sitting outside in the summer I like to catch one and watch it glow in my hand

[southlandshari]

19. Yes!!!

Lazy summer evenings, smell of fresh cut grass and honeysuckle. Grownups hanging out on the porch, all the neighborhood kids running around with mason jars with little holes punched in the lids for collecting lightening bugs (NOT fireflies!).

Great, great memories. Thanks, darlin'!!!

:hug:

[Metta]

20. Yes, and I brought back salamanders from camp, in a boot.

It was so long ago I'm not sure what I did with them. I think I may have let them go in the back yard. ... haven't thought about them in years.

[yellowdogintexas]

22. of course I did. Out on the front porch at night, running around

catching fireflies, swinging in the porch swing, leaping out of the porch swing to the yard (who jumped the farthest...I'll never tell). Big glasses of iced tea, Granny's pie, oh yes

small town in the south in the '50s...and we called them lightening bugs too. I never heard them called fireflies until I lived up north.

[flowomo]

23. my homage to fireflies:

this was my weekly column for July 1, 2004

also online at: http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2004/08/07/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis05.txt

By Rich Lewis, July 1, 2004

All the bug talk this summer was about the return of the cicadas, although, like the return of Halley's Comet in 1986, it turned out to be pretty much of a bust around here.

I didn't see a single one of the whirring critters in my part of Dickinson Township and I heard few reports of serious swarms elsewhere in the local area.

However, I did encounter them on a trip in early June to my in-laws' house in Maryland. Millions of the red-eyed insects were hanging from the trees in their neighborhood, while the crunchy brown shells of millions more carpeted the streets and lawns. The noise was relentless and deafening from sunup to sundown.

It was interesting, but hardly spectacular - and experiencing it once every 17 years seems like quite enough.

On the other hand, a truly spectacular bug show reliably takes place every summer, right here in our own back yards - and if the cicada was worth weeks of headlines and barrels of ink, then pyractomena borealis is worth at least one little column.

So here is my tribute to fireflies.

I stepped out on the porch Monday night at deep dusk and couldn't believe my eyes. The fireflies had been around for about a month, and I had been enjoying them immensely. But Monday was like the grand finale of a major fireworks display. In every yard, up and down the block, all the airspace between the ground and the tops of the trees was filled with twinkling green lights. Dense clouds of fireflies were winking on and off in mysterious patterns.

It reminded me of a giant Christmas display - except it went on endlessly in all directions and was far more intricate and delicate than any string of electric lights could ever be.

I don't know what brought so many of them out at once. Maybe it was the hard rain just before dark. But it was almost overwhelmingly beautiful.

If this sort of thing only happened once every 17 years, believe me, people would be writing and talking about it for months in advance. Whole neighborhoods would gather outside at sunset anxiously awaiting the arrival of the "flying lights." Parents would tell their children to pay attention because they wouldn't be seeing this amazing event again for a long, long time.

But fireflies, which are really beetles, show up every summer and so most people just take them for granted.

I actually remember the first time I ever saw a firely because I was 17 years old. I grew up in Massachusetts, and though fireflies live there, I had never seen one, probably because I lived in a city and fireflies avoid areas with lots of artificial light.

Then, in the summer of 1967, I went off to a summer program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. One night, while walking in the fields behind the dorms, I saw a flash of green light a few feet off the ground. Then another, and another.

I was so excited you'd think I had seen little green men emerging from flying saucers.

I started to run over to some people walking nearby to report this amazing phenomenon. Then I suddenly realized: "These are fireflies," which I had read about in children's stories and science books.

I remember quickly checking my excitement, thinking that everybody in the world must have seen fireflies before, and that I would seem pretty silly acting like it was a big deal.

But it was a big deal to me - and a moment I will never forget.

Somehow, that feeling comes back every summer when I see the first firefly blink across a field. I still want to run and find somebody and say, "Look! They're here!"

This year I even spent a few hours outside trying to take pictures of fireflies flying with their lights on. Of course, it was almost completely dark - so I had to put my digital camera on the setting that keeps the shutter open long enough to gather enough light to create an image. If a firefly blinked on and then moved, I got streaks of green light across the picture.

Some of the pictures were cool - one firefly executed a little "Nike" check mark in mid-air.

But I soon realized that I was trying to capture something that can't be captured. The beauty of fireflies is in their spontaneity, their unpredictability - the flow of lights across space. Fireflies can't be trapped - in a jar, or in a photograph - without being robbed of their essence. Once you stop a firefly, it's just a bug.

That old phrase "stop and smell the flowers" is a way of saying that we should slow down sometimes and appreciate the wonders around us.

Well, in that exact same sense my advice is to stop and see the fireflies.

Rich Lewis' e-mail address is:

[e-mail]

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

24. *Ahem* A poem I once wrote on the subject (posted here before)

Lightning Bugs



Warm springtime dusk-- Just right
for barefoot-running through
the back-yard grass so cool
and tickly; fresh and nice--
The flashes happen suddenly,
hidden at the corner of an
unsuspecting eye--
Now stop! Stand still;
don't breathe or blink,
for they may see and fly,
unseen, away!
Now over there! Up in the trees!
As night sneaks up to cool the breeze;
a Flash! and Flash!
Before you know you're darting
here and there across
the night-dark grassy lawn,
hands snatching at
a million zillion flecks
of winking yellow light--
You reach, and catch!
Your Mason jar is full
of blinking midnight
magic-lantern fire!
So, giggling, off you go to bed--
You keep your jar safe by your head--
You drowse to sleep, and smiling, dream
of whirring through the night on wings of
sprinkly, starry, winking, twinkly light.


Copyright © 2001-2005 Steven A. Hessler
All Rights Reserved

[doc03]

26. Used to catch lightening bugs and frogs at night and

salamanders during the day. Don't see many lightning bugs anymore.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

27. Now I bring a few into the house

So we can enjoy them blinking around when we go to bed at night.

[NNadir]

28. Yes I did. My kids do it now too.

Except unlike me, my kids let them go afterwards, so we have more the next year.

Beautiful creatures, fireflies. Predatory, but beautiful, unless you're a slug.

[Digit]

29. Yes and Japanese beetles became helicopters w/thread

tied to one leg.

[ashling]

30. I'm confused - you need a reason to hunt lightening bugs?

I did it as a kid, but I never had to have a reason.