lightening bugs

Shelley has a great moment reflecting on a brief but intense encounter with a swarm of fireflies.

This has been a good year for fireflies in Indy, too. We called them lightening bugs in Texas when I was a kid.

I assume that these bugs work off a certain I must do this now impulse that is hardwired in them, but on reading her blog entry I thought briefly about what a firefly might reflect upon on a summer night in a swarm across the road while a person drives home late from the library.

In our so-called civilized world we have some sort of virtual model in our head that has cleared the land of all wild things, bugs, animals, nuisances. Her post captures the awe, concern and delight when we are reminded that electricity and chemicals have not totally rid our spaces of creatures unlike us.

And guilt. I see the health department's fogger come through at night and worry about the bees, moths and fireflies and lady bugs, my pets, the neighborhood kids.

Where I work, certain somwhat endangered woodpeckers are suddenly swooping in to find a bug in the wood of a large pergola porch next to our building. It's wood. The good bugs are there. This is a problem, but I have to smile because when one of these birds are seen, large, and red-combed, flying across the path, or better yet, back at the townlet flying over one's backyard, we all talk about the sighting. Magnificent birds.

Our towns, our lives, our civilizations are efforts, myths, sort of like plays, set up for what we think are long runs, but subject to closing, getting pushed out for a new run by others.