Life, food, events, and community in Albuquerque, NM
Does anyone besides me miss lightening bugs?
Every now and then I clock into the fact that there are no lightening bugs here, and I get so sad and such a longing to see them. They are truly little magical creatures. I always just took them for granted. I grew up with them, and they were around every summer and I thought they would always be around........like drive in movie theaters.
It actually took me a couple of years of living here, to realize that there was a little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that something was missing. I was horrified when I finally figured it out? So you science geeks, why arent the here? Is it the altitute? The lack of humidity?
For all of you native westerners that have never seen them, you simply must!
A summer night filled with lightening bugs is one of the small wonders of the planet .
It actually took me a couple of years of living here, to realize that there was a little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that something was missing. I was horrified when I finally figured it out? So you science geeks, why arent the here? Is it the altitute? The lack of humidity?
For all of you native westerners that have never seen them, you simply must!
A summer night filled with lightening bugs is one of the small wonders of the planet .
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ron Da Bomb on -
I remember the first time I traveled east of NM and experienced lightning bugs. I was bedazzled. Little streaks of light, out of nowhere! I don't miss them like you, dolores, having grown up here, but I often dream of them.
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Permalink Reply by Rudolfo Carrillo on -
these lightening bugs that you speak of...do you think they can help me shed a few pounds?
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Permalink Reply by magoo on -
you shall not poke fun at the magical lightening bugs, they have enabled me to drop 20 pounds chasing those little guys around.......
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Permalink Reply by sophie on -
I love them too, but they always seemed to go wing-in-wing (?) with massive swarms of mosquitoes and gnats, which I don't miss.
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Permalink Reply by dolores on -
Not so. I mean you may find them together at times depending on region, time of year etc. Many a night I would play out side and my brother and I would catch lightening bugs in a jar until we were called in for bed. Then we counted them to see who caught the most, and opened the jar and let them fly out.
When I moved here from Georgia I thought surely we would not encounter mosquitoes, so the first house we built we did not screen in the porch. Wow, I have never seen moisquitoes that bad, so the next house had a huge wrap around southern style screen porch. If you live near the alfalfa fields and the ditches, with the flood irrigation, they can be bad here. Corralas, is swarming with them. The city/county comes in the summer and sprays this nasty stuff into the air.
I have never seen a gnat here, thank goodness, I hate those devilish things.
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Permalink Reply by sophie on
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I grew up in New York and spent a lot of time all over the east coast, which maybe explains my preconceptions.
I'm still astonished when I run into a mosquito here. I've been lucky, I guess, as I live in a drier section of the city.
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Permalink Reply by Sun Dog on -
Lightening bugs will be something that I'll miss once I move. There are many different varieties but they apparently never adapted to dry climates west of Kansas. I'm guessing that the larval form (the glow worms) can't handle the dry climate so they never established a toehold out west.
I'm sure generations of kids have tried to introduce captive lightning bugs when they came home from vacations back east.
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Permalink Reply by nmmtnmama on -
I remember the magic of lightening bugs from visiting relatives in Vermont when I was young and they were a fine example of the wonders (magic) of nature. We actually have fireflies here, but the flying adults don't glow. Up here in the East Mountains we sometimes see the little green light of the glow worms in rocky or grassy areas on dark summer nights. This description and picture are from the excellent What's That Bug website.
"John Wagener Green revised Microphotus in 1959 (Coleopterists Bulletin 13: 80-96). The only species he lists from Colorado is Microphotus pecosensis Fall. Fall described this species in 1912 from specimens collected in June and July in New Mexico. Green also recordedthis species from Arizona, California, Texas, Utah, and Chihuahua. His Colorado records include Royal Gorge, Junction Creek, San Luis Valley, and Stollsheimer. He notes that they were all females collected in June and July and that, although their identities are not certain, they are probably pecosensis. The pink females are said to closely resemble the more common CA species, M. angustus LeConte and have 6-segmented antennae, 4-segmented tarsi. The CO specimens all have 3-segmented "
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Hartzer on -
Ah, lightning bugs are good too...More good news is there are a lot of bugs that are Not in Abq...like no-see-ums.
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Permalink Reply by nmmtnmama on
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Caught me! This is one spelling I've been messed up on ever since my kid's second grade teacher insisted he spell it with the "e." Now my middle-aged brain leads me to spell it wrong at least half the time. (No, I'm not impugning all teachers, but you have to admit there are a few out there you wish weren't.)
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Permalink Reply by La Fanciulla del West on -
I remember lightning bugs as a very young kid in Kansas. Every night during the summer, we'd wait for it to get dark enough to see the lightning bugs and then gleefully chase them.
Who would have thought that the chemiluminescent enzyme of the lightning bug would become an important detection tool in science? Then again, who would have thought that an enzyme from a hot-spring dwelling bacterium would revolutionize medical and forensic testing, among other things?
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