Sometimes I feel guilty because I moved to the country, just another
refugee in the urban flight from big-city problems. Then something will happen
to remind me that I’m not here fleeingfrom something; I was drawn
irrevocably toward something. Something like watching the two great blue herons
return to the sycamore to nest this spring. Something like coming face to face
with a startled gray fox one morning on our driveway. Or something like what
happened last night.
I’ve lived in Texas all my life and I have never seen as many fireflies in one
spot as were flashing in our front field. I’m talking thousands. It was
stunning. Richard and I unfortunately had plans in town and despite all the
tiny beacons trying to lure us home, we drove away to a mediocre dinner filled
with regret. We noticed that the light show was limited to our land and a
couple of the vacant properties on either side. Just a thousand feet down the
road, we only saw a couple of isolated flashes and by the time we reached the
county road… nothing.
When we got home, all the lightning bugs had retired. So I spent today
learning more about my flashy friends. Dr. Lawrence Gilbert, UT zoology
professor and director of the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, calmed my fears
that I had been hallucinating when I saw patterns in the flashes. One of his
past graduate students documented (on tape) that fireflies do sometimes
synchronize their flashing. But the marvel in timing is even more impressive
when you consider that the different species of Lampyridae beetle (of
which there are several thousand) have their own unique flashing pattern -their
sexual signal – that appeals only to the ones they love or want to love or can
love – their own species. (Now, wouldn’t this be handy for humans? You walk in
a bar and from across the crowded room you see “Dot-Dash-Dash-Dot,” which means
he, too, enjoys water sports and Mexican brunches and Ansel Adams?) Of course,
there would be a sleazy lady of a certain cannibalistic species of glow bug
that would take advantage of this system by mimicking the pattern of her prey
species, thus luring the hapless male to her side, where she bites his head
off. But it’s not entirely one-sided; when the victimized glow bugs see the
cannibals’ characteristic flashing – the one they use to get mates, not dinner
– the smart ones in the herd shut off the lights and lay low until the bad guys
and gals are out of the neighborhood. (Does anybody find this as fascinating as
I do or have I just been writing about caulk and insulation for much too long?)
I could go on and on: about the one-and-a-half-inch glowing beetle in the
tropics that has two bright green lights and a red landing light that’s so
luminescent they put him in jars in Brazil and use him for a night light; about
the chemical compound, Luciferin, that gives off a quantum (I’ve always wanted
to use that word) of light during the change in its oxidation state; or about
firefly larvae who have a little light they use to hunt snails and worms at
night. But the lightshow’s about to begin and I don’t want to miss it.
If you want to end my self-indulgent ramblings, you’re gonna have to write
me with your “Hearth & Soul”-related questions, at the Chronicle, PO
Box 49066, Austin, TX 78765 or at SuzeBe@aol.com.
This article appears in May 19 • 1995 and May 19 • 1995 (Cover).