A group of fireflies is called a sparkle
a story about glowing and girlhood
Write from the World #3: stories that connect the natural world to our inner worlds. If you’d like to start from the beginning of the series, you can read more about the female anglerfish and the epiglottis.
Fireflies are an indicator species - their presence reveals a healthy community. What’s good for the fireflies is good for everyone. We need the lights. Of course we do.
I had a firefly childhood. I spent the majority of my time riding horses with a ragtag bunch of “barn girls.” Each summer, we brought our sleeping bags to the stables and sprawled out on some combination of hay bales and RV couches. At dusk, with the horses tucked in their stalls, we laid in the grass making dandelion braids and swatting at mosquitoes. Fireflies were everywhere.
To be clear, it wasn’t some kind of pastoral dream, although my mind, in its time-washed delusion, wants to twist it that way. There were eating disorders. Concussions. Jealousy. There was the time in my early 20s when I learned Zima wasn’t a brand of flavored water; my friend’s mother had driven us to the barn on countless occasions with one hand on the wheel and the other gripping a can of what I now know was an alcoholic beverage.
But there were lights every summer night in all directions. The time passed in blinks and wings. We didn’t realize it would ever be different.
I haven’t seen most of those girls in the past decade. There have been moves, bad boyfriends, different jobs, just regular life interferring. Fireflies struggle with this, too. External light can influence their ability to communicate. They need dark, real dark, to find each other.
My daughter was born in rural central Pennsylvania. There must have been tons of fireflies out there, but I didn’t see them much. Most of my time was spent in a windowless room at work or in front of a computer screen at home catching up on work.
We were isolated with a toddler who had a 7 pm bedtime. The fireflies never crossed my mind. When my mother died, we moved north, and for once, it was that easy. I saw the lights again.
Part of the impetus for the move was a desire for a different pace of life. My daughter quickly befriended the other children in our neighborhood. Summer days were spent making potions in the outdoor kitchen. Evenings passed with Freezies and sidewalk chalk. Often the small hand of one child or another reached for a juice box, a stick, a flash of passing light. Gentle, I called from the steps, they’re fragile.
And they are. Fireflies are soft bodied beetles. While they do have an exoskeleton, it is thin and pliable. It offers little protection from the tough parts of life. But fireflies are kept safe through other means. The same light that attracts them to each other sends a different message to predators.
Fireflies, although highly visible, rarely get eaten. This is because their blood is foul-tasting and toxic. The lights send a warning; birds, lizards, and toads know to stay away.
But how do predators know to avoid these bright creatures? Science hints at hard-won freedom; the ancestors of these fireflies must have been swallowed whole, chewed up, spat out many times over. Countless fireflies must have struggled so that these little ones can now light up unencumbered. The older generations couldn’t give them claws or sharp teeth. Instead, they passed down a secret, coded in their blood.
I sit on my porch and listen to the shrieking giggles of my daughter and her friends. They have their heads together, chanting some cryptic message known only to young girls who are staying up past their bedtimes. I let them linger in the grass. How could I interrupt this? A lit up girlhood. A soft bodied life.
The fireflies flitting around them know nothing of the need for covert poison. They don’t think about discretion or concealment or what lurks in the dark. They open their wings, and they glow.
Thank you for joining me for this month’s Write from the World! Here are a few additional facts about fireflies to fuel your creativity:
Each firefly species (there are around 2,000!) has a unique flashing pattern.
In some parts of the world, large groups of fireflies light up in unison.
Some firefly eggs have a faint glow when they are disturbed.
You created magic here, my friend!
Omg, CANDACE!
"They need dark, real dark, to find each other."
"Instead, they passed down a secret, coded in their blood."
This was so, so beautiful. (Also, there's something in the air! I've been working on a piece about bioluminescent creatures, too. Love these little synergies that crop up among out Monday Writing Group-ers. 🤍)