So you got it right the first time.

Whatever you call them, they are pretty, aren't they?

-- Ron

One of my favorite summer night sights.

I love to watch them too but I doubt that I have ever seen them to the magnitude of what you witnessed. I'll bet it was quite a sight.

One of the theories about the loss of fire flies is because of light pollution.

Did you know that they can synchronize their lights with each other? I never see them anymore (after moving from PA to CA).

Maybe in coastal Oregon or Washington? Don't know. I was always fascinated by them as a kid while visiting different places.

How come I see fireflies in New York, Illinois, Iowa and all through the South, but not in the West?

— Todd Schmidt | Chico, California

Well, you can see fireflies in the West, but you have to look a lot harder, says Marc Branham, a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History and an associate professor of entomology at the University of Florida. There’s kind of a firefly Continental Divide, and it has to do with flashing behavior among adults. Among Eastern species, males flash while they’re in flight to attract females; those species don’t live farther west than Kansas, except for a few isolated populations. Out West, it’s the adult females that glow, but only while they’re on the ground, and very faintly—so faintly their glow is hardly detectable even to a human eye fully adapted to the dark. And few people venture out without a flashlight or other light on.

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I really miss seeing the summer evening shows that I remember seeing when I was growing up in New York. I've told my wife about them, but we've never been in a place in the East during the season.

and could be the beginning of a quest.

We had spent the summer afternoon swimming at the creek. The sun was going down and it was time to go home, but they were famished after playing in the water and wanted a snack before we left.

Across the creek hundreds of lightning bugs began flashing in the bushes and reflecting in the water. There was no moon that night and as darkness deepened the stars came out and they were also reflected in the water. It was like jewels shining on the dark surface of the stream. We sat and watched it for a long time before we packed up and headed home.

We had them in New England and in the Great Lakes region. I loved watching them as a kid. My parent would pitch a big tent for us to play in all summer and let us sleep out in it some nights. My siblings and I would catch some and let them loose in the tent so we could watch them as we went to sleep.

Later in life I enjoyed driving around the lakes at night in summer, out in the fields there were so many that they looked like streaks of light as I rolled down the highway.

Twenty years ago, even thirty years ago, it was rare here to see more than a few a night in this part of the country. Now there are tens of thousands of them all night long!

Thirty years ago, in early May, a local FM radio station (104.1) ran a contest, with the goal to bring in 104 fireflies. But fireflies weren't really out yet here, so they were slow geting a winner. But they were out in force, in the south part of the state; and a friend and I were taking a trip down there. In a campground the night we were there, we caught 120 fireflies in a jar. We drove back home with them the next day, and the day after, we went to the radio station and cashed them in. We won the prize, $104.10! The DJ's were flabbergasted that we could find that many, until we told them we traveled to get them. Since it was his idea, I let him have most of the money, but I got $20 to buy a couple of albums (Asia and Styx Cornerstone), and he got stereo speaker system for his car. A nice memory!