Lobbying for lightning bugs ~ July 27, 1989

David Heiller

The search for lightning bugs started slowly with a lobbying effort by Michael, my 11-year-old nephew who spent a couple nights with us this week.

When I got home from work at 6:30 Monday evening, he asked, “Do you think there’s many lightning bugs out now, Uncle David?” He calls me “Uncle David” the way Huey, Louie, and Dewey say “Uncle Donald,” and with the same glint in his eye.

Michael is in the center of this extended family photo. 
His dad is giving him bunny ears.
(The rest of the gang gathered for this picture are: top to bottom, left to right, sorta kinda:
 Danny, Michael, Sarah, Brooke, Cindy, Noah, Ruby, Malika, Jeanne and David.)

“Sure,” I said knowingly, falling back on my knowledge of the subject from the days when I was Michael’s size.

“It sure will be fun catching them, won’t it?” he continued.

“Yeah, it will,” I answered, not realizing that he had just set the hook.

Like a good lobbyist, Michael dropped the subject. After supper, we went for a walk down the road, found a few agates, threw rocks at telephone poles. Michael found a striped green catepillar, and informed us that it would soon turn into a monarch butterfly. He broke a leaf off, and put it in a screened box that my bees come in.
    “I like to fill that box up with lightning bugs and use it for a lamp to save electricity,” I told Mike. He looked at me like he believed it.

After the walk, Michael, Noah, and I went into the field behind the house to explore some more We checked out the blue bird houses, and found two boxes occupied. In one, the young bluebirds had a streak of bright blue across their wing feathers. Michael peered in, and reached to touch one, but I stopped him. I had to lift Noah up to see them.

We walked toward the woods, moving ahead of Noah in the tall grass. I whispered to Mike, “Let’s hide.” He smiled, and we inched faster ahead, then ducked down behind some brush.

“Dad, where are you?” Noah called. His voice told me he knew this was a game. “Don’t talk,” Michael whispered.

Noah and Uncle Danny.

“OK Dad, I guess I’ll go back now,” he called. Mike and I crouched lower, breathing through our mouths. I looked at Michael. My brother, Danny, had played this game on me when I was Noah’s size. I could see a twinkle in Michael’s eyes that reminded me of Danny, his father.

Noah repeated that he was leaving. We waited. He waited. Finally, he gave his Loon Call, which sounds more like a kid falling off the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t resist. I answered with my Loon Call, which sounds more like my wife laughing when she talks on the telephone. We all stood up, and our walk continued.

“When will the lightning bugs be out?” Michael started asking, as we checked out the deer stand. He repeated the question as we peeked into the last of the blue bird houses, and back at the house as they put on their pajamas.

“Go to your room and look out the window. When you see the lightning bugs, you can come down,” I finally told them at 9:30. Noah is usually in bed by 7:30.

Soon they came pounding down the stairs, roaring past me as I sat at my computer at the kitchen table, trying to think of a column for this week. “Aren’t you coming?” Michael asked as the screen door slammed.

Well, it had been a while. So I had grabbed an empty mayonnaise jar and followed them out

Michael already had something glowing in his hand. “It flew up and landed on my face by the clothes line,” he said. “Look at it.” He showed me the blinking bug, then put it in the jar.

The search continued. But it was not a good lightning bug night. Their day had come two weeks earlier, and now only a few old lunkers flew high above, or far off in the field. We circled the house twice, but one bug was it.

“Time to come in,” I said, and said again. Michael put the jar on the porch. “Wait, if you leave the jar here, they’ll see it and come in,” he said. Noah looked at his cousin in rapture. Made sense to him, like it had made sense to me when Danny used to say that there were tiny bulldozers in water so we didn’t have to use soap when we took baths together on Saturday night. Same principle, 30 years later.

I finally got them inside, and poked some holes in the lid of the jar, and they went upstairs to examine their lonely firefly. Ten minutes later they were asleep.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone on a firefly hunt. Too long? I guess a little late night lobbying never hurt anyone.