Local fireflies?
The Slice column has been running readers’ recollections of fireflies since Memorial Day.
There are even a few more in tomorrow’s column.
Throughout the discussion, I have been operating on the assumption that our neck of the woods is not home to lightning bugs. No one challenged that assumption.
Until now.
Longtime Slice reader Phil Purcell of Rockford sent me a nice note which included this passage.
“I was born and raised on a farm five miles northeast of Rockford in 1926. I recall that back in the ‘30s I had the very same experience that you and others (who grew up elsewhere) did. We had a big ol’ poplar tree in the front yard. Every year my dad would call us kids out to show us the fireflies under that tree. My first thought was that dad had something to do with making those bugs light up. Of course, I was only 5 or 6 years old then.”
If anyone can shed some light on this, please feel free to weigh in.
* This story was originally published as a post from the blog "The Slice." Read all stories from this blog