A Fairyland of Lights

It happens every September.
I will walk down by the creek one night and there are hundreds of tiny
bluish-white lights dotting the banks, the sandbars, and even in the grass
near the water.

The first time I saw them it was one of those late evenings when I was
burning brush and waste paper and at the same time cooking what I call
a trash fire supper. Burning the trash- a necessary task- leaves beneficial
ashes for the garden beds and provides me with a delicious meal, usually
potatoes baked in the embers, they bake to mealy goodness best when those
aluminum nails are run through them, and sometimes thin little steaks rubbed
with butter and garlic, and usually a pig's foot or hunk of backbone for Buckie,
who also gets one of the potatoes.

While waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking, I walked over to the creek
bank. Even on fall nights before it turns too cold there is a chance of seeing
one of the elusive water snakes gliding along. No snakes this night, but I saw
something glittering at the water's edge.At first I thought it must be broken
glass reflecting the fire's light, so I started down the bank, planning to pick it
up. And found myself surrounded by a fairyland of lights. I turned off the
flashlight and just stood there breathing.

Finally, after what seemed long time of stillness, I moved cautiously forward,
not wanting to step on the lights. But they would go out when I walked near
them, no matter how carefully I stepped. Sometimes, as I stood watching,
many of the lights further away from me would disappear, but when I swept
the banks with the flashlight then turned it off, they would come back on,
shining steadily, as if in response to my light.

My quest to learn what they are was hampered for a long time because
I assumed they were some type of crustacean. I had forgotten that
sometimes the way to knowledge is to first discard all preconceived
notions and set forth with an open mind. But when I learned there are
many bioluminescent marine creatures, but rarely any in fresh waters, I
was sure these must be some of the rare ones.

Then my youngest son, Andy, came to see the lights, and stood there,
delighted and awed. "I've been around creeks all my life, " he said,
"And I've never seen anything like this." He had to dig one out to see
what made the lights, and exclaimed, "Why, it's just a bug!"

Then I stopped seeing little crustaceans and began comparing them to
illustrations of bugs. I would never have thought of fireflies, for fireflies
have traffic-light yellow lights that blink off and on, and these were a more
pleasing greenish or bluish white that did not blink. But they are indeed
fireflies (Lampyridae), the lightning bugs of childhood, or rather it is the
firefly larva.

They are about an inch long. look flattened, mud or sand colored. Such
homely creatures to make this fairyland of lights. One theory is that they
burrow in damp earth because that is where their prey is, earthworms or
other small worms.

The light show by the creek usually lasts about two weeks. After the first
heavy rain there is only a scattering of lights. I don't know if the rain washes
most away or if they simply burrow deeper to prepare for the cold soon to
come. As the nights become colder, as usually soon happens following the
hard rain, the lights disappear altogether.

It is usually late May or early June when the mature fireflies rise up from the
grass and turn their yellow lights on and off and on throughout the summer nights.

It was in June when Gil and I brought our eight cats from Chicago about
three months after we started moving to North Georgia. Oscar, one of the
younger cats, was irritable from the long drive and wary of the strange
surroundings. He would stop complaining long enough to rise on his back
feet and bat at the low-flying fireflies.

Then I realized we hadn't had fireflies in Chicago. I was well aware that we
had never been able to see the stars. So on that June night we walked about
the yard with the cats beneath a starry sky with fireflies drifting lazily upward
around us.

That was when we were living in the house that burned last January. Gil, the
cats, and the house are all gone now. But the same sky full of visible stars
stretches overhead here, fireflies rise up from the grass on summer nights,
and every fall I can look forward to the fascinating light display their young
provide.