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Firefly: a lightning bug
Lightning bug: a firefly
Fire bug: an arsonist
Lightning fly: ??? The electric eel of the dragonfly world?
“Is that bat glowing?”
That’s no bat. Run!"
[Electrical crackling sounds]
Cocuyo is the name in Cuba 🥹
Different areas have different lightning bugs too. The ones in southern ontario are not the same as the ones in the midwest US.
They have distinct blinking patterns as well. IIRC observing the pattern is one of the ways used to classify them.
and colours!
Except when it’s a firefly pretending to be a different species of firefly.
Tumbler has one of the worst comment layouts…
I grew up calling them lightning bugs, and I’m so excited to see a thread full of people calling them the same!
Fireflies is a much cooler name though.
Shiny
Anybody tries to kill you, you try and kill 'em right back.
In German, they’re Glühwürmchen (“glow worms”).
Interesting, interesting. We call the female lightning bugs here glow worms because they are wingless, but today I’m learning that is not the case for all species!
Also Glühwürmchen is a cute word.
Wait hold up, in Dutch we have glimwormen (“shimmer worms” ) but those don’t fly! They’re actual bioluminecent worms.
Aren’t German Glühwürmchen the same thing?
Glühwürmchen definitely refers to the flying variant. Might also refer to non flying species but I’ve never seen or heard anyone talk about any of those. The term is probably just used for any type of glowing insect, no matter if worm or bug.
We used to have so many of them when I was a kid. Their numbers are dwindling. 😭
The yard spray folks come around every spring offering me a deal because they are spraying all my neighbor’s yards. I’m the only yard with lighting bugs in the neighborhood.
A Silent Spring was supposed to be a warning, not a how-to.
I feel a little bad for the pest control guy that showed up at my house last spring. I majored in Biology, but did not graduate, my partner has their Masters in Biology and wrote their thesis on ecological damage from heavy metals.
Yeah, my yard looks a little unmanaged, sure, you can see bugs all over the milkweed, that’s intentional. My yard was visited by thousands of bees (and sadly) a dozen or so butterflies daily. Because we had the insects and native plants, we had lots of small birds, and becuase we had lots of small birds, we were lucky enough to have a local Cooper’s Hawk as a regular visitor nearly every day.
The guy offered to do indoor services for spiders and termites. I told him I don’t have any of those because I have a bunch of basement centipedes. He said he could spray for those, and I was like “Why? They’re harmless and they’re the reason I don’t have dangerous spiders and termites in the house”.
My neighbours use to warn me about ticks every summer and how they proliferate in the grass. Since my yard has been a safe haven for lizards I haven’t found a single tick.
Saw this just the other day here…
The less I maintain my yard the more lightning bugs we get.
We do not maintain our back yard very well. I refuse to let these amazing insects disappear. We also seed for pollinators as well.
I tried to go this route with my small backyard. Unfortunately invasive vines (creeping Charlie and English ivy) got entrenched in very short order and outcompeted almost everything else. Pulling up the vines left nearly bare earth that eroded very quickly. If I ever get the money and the time, I’m going to have to add soil and seed and tend to it properly. For the time being, I left most of last season’s leaves (mostly oak) and put down netting is some of the worst areas to try and keep the wind from stripping it bare(er). I’m hoping this leads to better water retention and soil conditions, and not just hiding spots for more vines. 😕
If possible, spread some local seed packs for pollinators on the bare dirt. Should be able to find some for your region/state. Better than letting the regular weeds take over.
That’s the problem, nothing has taken over. It’s just bare cracked clay because the soil is gone. My target for seeding is white clover, which technically isn’t local but it’s been around so long it might as well be. I can’t let things grow too long unless I want to check for ticks every time I go outside. Clover seems to be a nice compromise. I’ve long ago given up the fight against dandelions, much to the neighbors’ chagrin.
The yard is unfortunately pretty far down the priority list, which is annoying because it’s probably one of the more satisfying projects once it’s stabilized. But lack of funds and spoons dictates the effort must go elsewhere.
Clover is a good choice. Nothing wrong with a nitrogen fixer.
I saw that the other day too. It’s just that 35 years ago, everyone still raked their lawns. Same as 35 years before that.
We are in the middle of an insect apocalypse.
Remember when you were little how many fucking moths there were? Couldn’t keep the porch light on at night or they’d get in the house and you’d be finding moth carcasses all summer.
Now there’s just a few. Hardly see any anymore.
Same for house flies, and bees. I used to have to go and spray for wasps every spring, I don’t remember the last one I saw.
Grasshoppers too. I used to fill buckets with them as a kid. I haven’t seen more than a few in the last decade.
Remember when you needed a bug shield to drive on the highway?
Yes and yes (to the person you replied to). All I’m saying is that that narrative seems to be coalescing around “it’s because people raked leaves.” Does that play a part? Probably. But there’s no way it’s just that. It’s far too pervasive to be “personal actions.” The root cause has to be systemic.
People have been raking leaves the whole time, so that’s definitely not why.
Raking leaves, expanding suburban sprawl (and therefore lawns), and the over-use of poisons, pesticides and fertilizers.
It’s not just the leaves, it’s humans fucking with the environment, on a macro and micro scale. But that’s harder to convey in a single panel
Agreed. But as someone who grew up with the Crying Indian, I am very wary of this kind of oversimplification. It was always, “make sure to cut the rings from the six pack of cans so the turtles don’t get stuck,” and not, “stop manufacturing death traps,” or, Primus forbid, “stop treating the ocean and waterways in general like free waste disposal.” It’s still being actively astroturfed to this day (see also plastic straws). Case in point: a few years ago there was an “accidental chemical waste discharge” into a tributary of a major regional river that is used as a water source for much of the area. This was posted about in a lightly trafficked regional subreddit where a “hot” post might accumulate a few dozen upvotes over the course of a day and a handful of comments. This one reached over a hundred comments within hours.
It’s only x gallons, the river moves y gallons every minute. Nobody would have noticed until the media made a big deal."
The same stuff is used in cosmetics and people put it on their face every day. It’s harmless.
And so on.
Messaging is important. The corporate class understands this. Hence trying to shift blame for every single systemic issue onto individuals. Plastic straws. You don’t have the right to swim in clean water. Plastic bags. Fuel efficiency. Overnight delivery. Vote with your wallet. Overproduction. Recycling. And now raking leaves.
Want all that in a single panel? Zoom out from the raked lawn and show the silhouette of a factory belching smoke into the air and vomiting waste into a river in the background.
It’s also humans continually expanding and building in previously undeveloped areas. It crowds out other species.
30 years ago it didnt matter if you raked your leaves because there were still plenty of areas for lightning bugs to migrate in from. But when everyone’s surrounded by miles of suburbs the lightning bugs have further to go for you to see them
i tell this to people all the time and they do not believe me
I never lived anywhere near them, never seen a bioluminescent creature in my life despite my wish to do so.
But when I was about 6 years old, I have a weird memory of my parents driving out to the deep desert with me and we parked off some dirt road and my dad got out of the truck for maybe a half hour. My mom seemed nervous. I saw a green light at the base of a bush about 15 feet away from the vehicle, just a tiny little bright green light, solid color, middle of nowhere.
I asked my mom what it was and she said “it’s a glowworm” and I asked if we could go look at it and she snapped “NO don’t go outside!” and I was absolutely boggled what was going on. My dad came back, they drove out of there without a word. One of those life mysteries we all have tucked away in our memory banks. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t dreaming, but it’s getting back there in years, probably was early 80’s now. (This was the Sonoran desert in winter, there are no “glow worms” out there, and no bugs generally coming out in the cold anyway. I lived there for decades, there are no bioluminescent critters there.)
You would not believe your eyes
When ten thousand fireflies
You already messed up on the second sentence man, its ten million, not ten thousand
Well, shit
edit: in my defense, |i’ve never seen a single firefly, so ten thousand would be enough for me not to believe my eyes
Growing up, they were indigenous where I lived. After I moved away, it was so surreal no not see random lights in the back yard during the summer nights.
No fireflies where I live, but that doesn’t mean my childhood was free of a beautiful insect swarm.
My area had a bad outbreak of cockchafers I got to enjoy.
I have never heard of that insect.
Despite the name and status as a pest (they are literally European scarabs), I feel nostalgic whenever I see one. Farmers ruthlessly fought them, so there hasn’t been a swarming event here in at least 20 years.
Lightning bugs swarm??? That’s simultaneously awesome and terrifying, or maybe terrifyingly awesome. Now I want to see a lightning bug swarm even more than an intense meteor storm.
Lightning bugs, aka Fireflies, are harmless. Their little butts just emit flashes of light from internal chemical reaction, like a short lived glow stick. If you encounter a field with a bunch of them, it’s real pretty.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park has a “Lightning Bug Lottery” every year, a certain number of passes are randomly given out to applicants to see the park at night during peak breeding season for fireflies. Supposedly they will all sync up their lights and converge in a huge group on one tree.
I’ve seen a smaller event once in my hometown. Just a whole tree was sparkling for a few minutes. I think the most amazing thing about it is the light doesn’t really show up well on a camera, so you kinda have to just put your phone down and enjoy it with your eyes. The only place you can keep that moment is in your mind.
And an equally beautiful name for that fine insect
I saw a few lightning bugs in my yard last year. My life goal have them consistently in my yard. Good thing this dovetails nicely with my other life goals of getting butterflies, bumblebees and birds in my yards
Make sure not to bag and toss all the leaves in the fall - leave a bunch in a pile in the corner of your yard. Thats where they like to stay at night
We got piles on my gardens which will get covered for composting in place for the rest of the year. Also our wildflower garden is pretty much untouched except a yearly mow to remove baby trees. So plenty of spots for bugs
Also, people are born every day, and some just go on with their lives never learning about random facts like these. Every day, someone is one of the lucky 10k.
Man, imagine seeing a field of fireflies IRL for the first time, if you had never heard of them before! That would be pretty mindblowing.
I knew about them but didn’t see them well into adulthood. It’s underwhelming
Really? I’m a seasoned adult-er, and I still get a little flicker of wonder when i see those lights floating in the field behind my house on summer evenings.
I feel like fireflies have to be pretty perfectly whelming? like on the level of a swarm of pretty butterflies: cool, but not that cool.
I think it’s just because the only idea I had was from cartoons. They don’t exist where I’m from.
They are still eery and cool though.
I don’t know man, I’ve seen an actual swarm of butterflies (it took days for them to fly through) and it was pretty fucking awesome.
Your mum is underwhelming.
Indeed, she doesn’t shine at all
Whelming always goes for the MILFs.
coming from australia, this is super real… we have such a unique set of animals and plants that it’s all just so normal to us, but then you travel overseas and everything is like what you see on tv and in movies
i’m mid 30s, and last year i saw snow falling for the first time in chicago… snow falling is beautiful, and to most of the world it’s just normal - to australians, it just never happens
Snowfall is probably one of the best sensations in nature. It’s just so calming and peaceful.
Seeing how Australians react to kangaroos like they’re just slightly more dangerous deer is so jarring
Deer will mostly run the hell away. Roos OTOH, sometimes you gotta punch back.
(For those rare folk who haven’t seen that video, he was getting it off his dog.)
To be fair, they mostly are just slightly more dangerous deer
At least deer act like prey animals
Kangaroos would learn their place pretty quick if humans started hunting them with pointy sticks again 😤
i mean, we hunt them with guns now so i’m not sure a pointy stick will change their point of view :p
I hope you get many beautiful snowfalls in your life yet
Ghibli even made a movie about them
It’s been more than 20 years since my wife moved to the west cost and she still laments the lack of fireflies. Where-as, whenever I’ve been out east, I’m caught off guard by them… then I start singing Roxanne.
You don’t have to put on the gold light
