If You Were A Firefly, How Would You Fare?

My granddaughter, Kayla (I call her my Lamb), has been visiting us for the past week, and she is an aficionado of bugs. Any bug. All bugs. If something inside or out moves, crawls, flies, skips, hops, creeps, jumps, runs … it doesn’t matter … Kayla will catch it somehow and study it — or them.

In the beginning of the week, it was frogs. She caught three of them; the largest was the size of my thumbnail. We took pictures. Those tiny things make big noises at night. But they were quickly overshadowed by something else.

Think of it this way: just anybody can catch a frog. And what can frogs do? They croak, jump, and dampen the hands of whoever is holding them. ( I’ll have to change my attitude in a week or so, because another granddaughter loves frogs.)

But who can catch intermittent flashes of yellowish/ greenish light that appear in the cool of the evening in the backyard?

Bugs that flash as they fly? Flying beetles that have tail- lights? They became the stars of the evening in the back yard, and Kayla set out to catch a jarful of them. Or, are they lightning bugs? Who cares. She was having a ball!

What are these luminescent critters? Well, to start off: they are not flies.

The flying insects we see in the backyard are nocturnal beetles, and are members of the Lampyridae family. They are members of the Coleoptera order which has over 2,000 species. Most people know why they are called fireflies, or lightning bugs, but few people know how they produce the glow — or the lightning.

Here it is in a proverbial nutshell: the light production, or flashing, is caused by a chemical reaction called bioluminescence. An enzyme called luciferase reacts with luciferin, oxygen, and magnesium to produce the glow. The light production uses up the chemical, and they start over. Now you know.

The l uminescence, pattern, and duration of the flashes are different in the various species, and are used for three basic purposes. 1) It attracts potential mates. 2) It attracts potential food for the flasher. Yes, many of these females are carnivorous. And 3) It warns potential predators of how bad they (fireflies) taste! Some are toxic. Even the larvae are luminescent, possibly for protection. Therefore, they are called glow worms.

The females deposit their eggs in the ground, and the babies remain there until adulthood — in some cases, up to three years. The larvae eat worms, slugs, and other tasty morsels. Some adults eat other fireflies, nectar, pollen, and some don’t eat at all. These fanciful fliers vary in shape, color, and size — the largest are up to an inch long. The adults live one to three months.

Some females from the Photuris group mimic the photic flashing simply for the purposes of attracting food. For this reason, these cannibals are also called femme fatale fireflies.

Kayla didn’t know all of this as she gathered up 20-25 flashing beasts and put them in a jar. But she does know the difference between the males and females. We took pictures, both photos and videos, of the critters lighting up the jar, and I took a picture of one lighting up her hand as she held it.

“Grandpa! I caught a female firefly! Look!”

“Okay, little Lamb, how do you know it’s a female?” Kayla is smart, but I didn’t know she could tell the difference between the flying insects.

“I put two in a jar with grass, and put the lid on it. The two were different sizes, and the larger one has a narrower abdomen. A few hours later, I saw the larger one eating the smaller one, and only females eat other fireflies. And the lightning bug I just now caught looks just like the one having dinner; so it must be a female.”

As I said, Kayla is smart — and observant.

If you, dear reader, were to compare yourself to fireflies, how would you fare?

Do you fly around in your “backyard” — your area of influence — endeavoring to attract attention to yourself? Do you put on a show to take attention away from others? Do you devour others — gossip, slander, assassinate other’s character — in order to promote yourself and your own ideas?

That kind of activity usually backfires, and results in belittling yourself.

Jesus gave the prime example: spend time promoting and encouraging others, and you will reap the benefits.

S. EUGENE LINZEY IS THE AUTHOR OF ‘CHARTER OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.’ SEND COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS TO MASTERS.SERVANT@COX.NET. VISIT HIS WEBSITE AT WWW.GENELINZEY.COM. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.