Catching lightning bugs (fireflies)

[Jazzy1]

When I was a kid, I'd catch lightning bugs in the backyard during summer evenings. I'd put them in jars with holes in the lid, thinking I was making lanterns. It felt like magic back then.

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Did you catch lightning bugs?

 

[Lewkat]

Oh, how we had a ball doing this when I was a kid. How the simple things in life entertained us in those days.

 

[CallMeKate]

Good memories... and yes, I did catch them both as a kid and with my daughter.

 

[AprilSun]

I used to catch them too. It was so much fun!

 

[JustDave]

It was a big part of my childhood. 70 years later, I tried it again. It wasn't as easy as I remembered.

 

[DebraMae]

I used to catch them as a child and the last time I did was with my great granddaughter. She was afraid to touch them at first but then caught on and had a ball. She wanted to take them home to show her mom.

 

[CallMeKate]

It was a big part of my childhood. 70 years later, I tried it again. It wasn't as easy as I remembered.

They saw you coming, eh?

 

[jujube]

I can remember catching a lot of them once and then letting them loose in the house, thinking that it would be great to see them flying around after the lights were cut off.

My mother was  not amused......

 

[Oldeagle66]

I remember catching them in the backyard, they were everywhere..... then putting them in a jar and on the dresser at night.

 

[WheatenLover]

When we lived in rural PA, I was elated to see hundreds of lightning bugs out at night. My collie was alarmed. He barked at them, and he wasn't much of a barker (like most collies are). My kids were teens and it didn't seem to delight them at all.

 

[spookycat2]

A friend back in our early 20s was dating a girl who had just moved here from California, a true "Valley Girl".

She was so amazed at those green lighted things hitting his Mustang windshield, apparently they didn't have those where she was from.

 

[jujube]

In the Smokies, they have the blue lightning bugs and the ones that blink in unison.

One summer that we spent there, the trees were filled with them after a rainstorm. For about an hour that night, it looked like the trees were strung with fairy lights. I've never seen anything like that and have never seen it again.

 

[Marcy Sheiner]

Thanks for this thread, @Jazzy1. So many great memories of doing this in the summertime!

 

[Flarbalard]

I never knew anyone, of my contemporaries, who collected them, but firend's kids who did. Never occurred to me to collect them. I enjoy them when they're here, after that-- I don't think about them.

 

[Dr. Jekyll]

Real specific memory from the junior high era. The church we attended had the parsonage immediately next door and it had a large, green front yard. At the right time of the year when we arrived for the social hour before Sunday evening service, all the kids would be in the front yard of the parsonage chasing and catching fireflies. Of course, on the negative side, there were some boys (of course) that would take sticks and swat them like swinging a baseball bat.

 

[seadoug]

Living my first 8 years in North Carolina, we absolutely caught lightning bugs and put them in a jar, then later released them after we ceased to be entertained.

 

[KSav]

Catching lightning bugs as a child, with my sister and my cousin, in the near-dark, usually after a cookout, is probably my most cherished childhood memory. I was very sad that my own children never got the chance to do it. I never saw them in Upper Michigan or Nevada, where we lived when they were of the age to do that.

 

[ChiroDoc]

I loved lightning bugs when I was a kid growing up in the North. They were fascinating.

But I don't think I've ever seen one here on the coastal south. Maybe the dragon flies eat em.

I do love the old Mills Brothers song, "Glow Worm" (Glow little glow worm, glimmer, glimmer...).

 

[OneEyedDiva]

We sure did catch lightening bugs. Our jars looked like the one in your picture.