Since I spend so much time outside, I see a lot of things that others do not. Mother Nature provides a lot of interesting courses of study if we only take the time to venture out. Today, a tiny beetle caught my eye and the eye of Bat, the cat. Bat has an infinity for bugs of any kind and will eat them if given a half of chance. While I normally like this as he keeps a lot of caterpillars from eating the garden, I shooed him away and then "disguised" my beetle. This one, I wanted to live. The beetle was a lightning bug or for those not from the Deep South...a firefly or glow worm. The beetles are in a steep decline due to humans so I figure that as a human, I needed to do my part in rectifying the situation. No cat was going to devour my lightning bug! By disguising, I mean I moved several potted plants around the fern where the bug was perched for the day.
Lightning bugs, fireflies and glow worms are all the same thing. The critters' numbers are sharply declining due to chemicals sprayed on lawns and due to "light pollution". They need darkness to find a mate by means of their own glow. Street lights, porch lights, solar path lights, house lights...in fact, any type of lights diminish their ability to find each other. The bugs simply do not reproduce and soon will totally disappear from an area.
On the Bayou, we have no street lights nor outdoor lights other than the stars in the sky! Personally, I do not use chemicals in the garden and, happily, the city has not been sending out their "mosquito patrols" at night. (Those mass sprayings killed everything.) Seeing the lightning bug this morning made me smile as I know that my gardening style may have saved a life albeit a bug's life. Perhaps if my grandlittles are ever here during the summer months, we can watch the beetles as they light up the woods with their "tiny lanterns".
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