Rufus T. Firefly

 

     I'm sure we all have these memories. One night, you walk outside and suck in your breath when the night is flashing a magical Morse code. Fireflies! Lightning bugs! You have to find a mason jar or an empty mayonnaise jar, catch a few, poke holes in the top so they can breathe, look at their glowing, contemplate the ethics of bringing them indoors in their glass prison for the night as a nightlight versus letting them find their firefly friends in the blueberry bushes. And now, in the twenty-first century, you have to Google how they glow, whether the bats you see are eating them (no, they're not, they're kindly eating the mosquitos), and whether their phosphorescence is similar to that of the jellyfish and other sea creatures you studied this year.

     My son: "Do bats eat fireflies?"

     Siri: "I've found 15 restaurants close to you."

     My sons and I tried to catch pictures of them glowing outdoors without success. I needed a real SLR that could leave the shutter open longer, not my phone's camera. My oldest son kindly brought a firefly indoors for a few moments. I had to assist Rufus T. Firefly (allusion to the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, a favorite of my boys) in typing this post, as he was not heavy enough to keys.