One of my favorite things about moving to Pennsylvania this summer has been the re-emergence of fireflies. I don't know enough about their habitats to say they don't appear in Virginia or Washington State (my other two recent homes), but I never observed them there the way I see them flickering in my yard every evening here. One of my most magical memories as a child was a cabin trip my family went on in Canada one summer--in the evening we turned all of the lights off and went upstairs in the cabin and looked out into the fields to see them filled with hundreds of thousands of fireflies. It was such a beautiful sight and something that always stuck with me despite my terrible long-term memory that makes most childhood memories quite fuzzy. They're also fascinating creatures--the way they communicate through flashes, or how they produce cold light, and how the females sometimes eat the males...Ah, fireflies are wonderful!
CONVERSATION