Non-Fiction

Late on a mid-June night, I stood barefoot in the yard between our house and a field of prairie forbs. Around me fireflies blinked greenish yellow—hovering, dodging,or posing on stems. The night before, they had drawn me to the window. Now, although I’d stayed indoors for most of the past six months, their light had lured me outside. 

I wore clothing infused with permethrin, a potent tick repellent, and carried a canning jar and a swatch of cheesecloth for a lid. In minutes, a fast flasher flew into the jar. It signaled frantically as I brought it indoors for inspection. Under a magnifying light I saw its red-dotted head, its tan-striped back, nearly two centimeters long, and its antennae half that length. An ivory lantern spanned two segments of its lower abdomen. Lynn Faust’s Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs (2017) told me that this specimen was probably a subspecies of Photuris versicolor—common in the eastern United States—but beyond that, I had no idea. Fireflies can be hard to distinguish without a microscope. Some are more easily identified by behavior, their blinking pattern, and the hue of their light.

I kept the beetle only long enough to examine it. I didn’t want it to miss another moment of its brief mating season, its brief adult life—a mere three or four weeks. Outside, the field was still alight. I uncapped the jar and shook it gently over the grass, but the firefly, probably petrified, didn’t leave. I set down the jar and left it there, assuming the insect would find its way out.