Luminous

By Kylee George

The first house we lived in was a small one story outfit with space in both the front and back to play. The

backyard was spotted with patches of red dirt between the blades of bermuda grass and outlined by a chain link

fence that was taller than me, though not by much. In the front, there were two rows of southern wax myrtle,

trimmed into a rectangular prismatic shape that lined the sidewalk to the front door and our driveway. One of these

hedges bore hard and round berries that once, at the age of five, left to my own devices while my mother cleaned

the garage, I decided to collect and swallow. A call to poison control was eventually made and I spent the rest of

the day lying on the couch, sorry for my attempt at foraging.

As a young and adventurous child, much of my world was made up of the front and back yards of this

house. This was the place I learned to climb trees especially fast without my shoes on, where I practiced dribbling

soccer balls up and down the street (also often barefoot, much to the chagrin of my mother), and where I had

many unfortunate experiments with gravity–from falling out of trees to tipping over on a ladder and even once

pulling the entire shelving system in the garage down on myself. It was also the place where I first encountered

the lightning bug.

Lightning bugs, as my family calls them, are known officially as Lampyridae and are a type of soft-bodied

beetles. There are many different species of Lampyridae that vary in shape and size, sleeping and mating patterns,

and location. Not all Lampyridae light up.

Their lights, of course, are what make lightning bugs or fireflies, whatever you like to call them, so recog-

nizable. This is due to a process called bioluminescence–where chemicals in specialized cells in the insect’s

abdomen combine with oxygen to create a new, inactive molecule called oxyluciferin. The reaction, caused by

an enzyme called luciferase, does two things: first, it combines with a phosphate to form a new compound on

the surface of the enzyme. Then, that compound combines with oxygen to form the oxyluciferin and yet another

phosphate compound. This is the winning combination–the chemical compound that gives off light in varying

shades of white, green, yellow, and even hints of red on occasion.

I don’t remember the first time I saw these little creatures, cousins of the hard-shelled black beetles that I

often found rooting around in the dirt beneath our shrubs, flitting about in our front yard. I do, however, remember

four it didn’t yet occur to me to give chase and attempt to capture one between my grass-stained palms.

As I grew older, the lightning bugs became a sign of the oncoming summer; when they appeared, I knew

that school was soon to end and the air was ready heat up. The summers where I lived in Central Oklahoma went

through climactic phases, culminating through July and August in a dense paste of heat that was inescapable. The

lightning bugs, however, came before that–in late April and early May, when the winter chill was giving way to

the oncoming warmth, the thickening of the air that smelled of honeysuckle and rain. They were always a wel-

come part of the symphony of spring.

We moved to a new house when I was seven or eight, one with more room inside and a cast of neighbors

with whom I would play for the remaining years of my childhood. The backyard was dense with trees, many of

which were dead due and would be removed in our first year there, the ground covered only by red dirt that turned

to thick mud any time it rained. The front yard was covered by a dense fescue and sloped steeply down to the

street. This is where I spent most of my time playing–where I learned to skateboard and where I played ill-advised

games of tackle-football with the other neighborhood kids, most of whom were boys who had no qualms taking

me down at full force.

This is also the patch of grass where I learned that sometimes, it is dangerous to be luminescent.

As I mentioned before, I never had the urge to chase and capture those little glowing beetles–at least, I

didn’t until I saw my next door neighbor Brandon doing just that. He told me, with that wild kind of excitement

that accompanies childhood discoveries, how beautiful they were if you put two or three or four of them in a jar,

how they would bounce around inside the glass, flickering like a magic lantern. I watched as he bounced around

the yard, barefoot, knobby white knees stained green and brown from diving in the grass. After what felt like an

hour, he let out a glee-filled scream and held his arms out towards me, hands cupped in the fading light. I looked

at him, puzzled–how did he know he got it? And then I saw it. Peeking out from the spaces between his middle

and ring finger was a soft yellow light.

I rushed to grab the empty jam jar he had brought outside and he carefully deposited the lightning bug into

it. I kept my hand over the top to keep our new charge in while he ran to get plastic wrap to cover the top. As I

had been hastily torn off. Every so often, its abdomen crescendoed to radiate a clean yellow glow, and then it

would fade. I studied its soft brown shell, the yellow-striped elytra which protected its wings, and the white plates

of its head. It flitted to the adjacent wall of the jar and settled again; I wondered what it thought of me.

Soon, Brandon returned and we fitted the plastic wrap over the top and held it up–our lightning bug. Our

lantern.

At first, the lightning bug resisted, flying up at the plastic wrap to make an escape. But it realized soon that

there would be no escape, and instead took to flitting about the jar, flashing the yellow glow of its abdomen–just

like Brandon had promised. We looked at it with glee.

After some time, the light emanating from the insect’s abdomen began to grow dimmer, its movements

more lethargic as it crawled along the walls to the base of the glass.

“Air holes!” Brandon exclaimed suddenly. “We didn’t give it air holes!” He ran around the yard, search-

ing feverishly for a stick small enough to punch holes in the top that would let in oxygen without letting out our

charge. He found one and ran back, but it was too late. The bug was dead, its light faded for the last time.

I was called inside soon after, and with little time to reflect on the events of that evening, went to sleep

thinking about the importance of air holes.

We resumed our hunt the next evening, this time prepping the plastic wrap with air hole before we began.

Brandon caught the first one, and I the second and third, then he trapped the fourth–barely avoiding crushing its

soft body between his fingers. With the four of them in the jar, we watched in wonder. Over time, it seemed that

their lights synced up with one another, pulsating from darkness to a radiant yellow glow together in the dark of

the night. He had been right; they were positively beautiful.

We were called inside again, and Brandon let me keep the jar with our four lightning bugs–our bug lantern,

as he called it. I took it to my room and set it on my bedside table and watched as they glowed in the dark room

until I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, all four of them were dead and I was distraught. I didn’t understand–we

had poked holes in the plastic and even put some dirt and grass in the jar to make it feel more like home. Why had

they died?

imagine, she took off the plastic wrap, turned it over, and shook out the grass, the dirt, and the tiny Coleopteric

carcasses that had collected at the bottom. As I got ready for swim practiced, I wondered if it had hurt when they’d

died–if they had tried to escape or comforted each other in their final moments.

At that age, I didn’t understand what I know now: that poking holes and putting a handful of grass in the

jar is not enough to replicate their environment. Lightning bugs, like all creatures, have a complex set of needs

that must be met for them to survive in an environment.

According to the organization Firefly Conservation and Research, lightning bugs need moisture in their

environments to survive. In order to promote a positive habitat for these little flickering beetles, it’s best to have

some kind of water available in your yard, whether that is a pond or a fountain or a natural stream. Fireflies sur-

vive best in moist climates, places with high humidity and lakes and rivers. They also appreciate organic debris

like logs and fallen leaves that rot and give larvae a safe place to grow. Like many other insect species, lightning

bugs are endangered by modern environmental practices like pesticide usage, chemical fertilizers, and over-mow-

ing of lawns.

This organization also provides directives on how to best care for captured lightning bugs, which includes

placing clumps of grass and apple slices into the jar and leaving the lid without holes, in order to preserve the

moisture of the air that lightning bugs so desperately crave. According to their research, fireflies should only be

kept in captivity for a day or two; they have relatively short lifespans with which to flit about and illuminate the

night sky. Also, the jar might run out of oxygen and they will die.

I don’t know why Brandon and my lightning bugs died so quickly. I have to assume it was because we put

them in a tiny jar and poked holes in the plastic wrap, thereby drying out the air. That doesn’t explain the first one,

though. Rather, I tend to attribute a more existential cause to their death; we catch fireflies and put them in jars

because they are luminous. But no one truly thrives in captivity–eventually, that light will go out.

At the end of my first year in New Mexico, a group of colleagues-turned-friends and I drove three hours

from Gallup to Kayenta, Arizona to help another friend do some renovations on her mother’s home. The house

may have missed my calling in home renovation, as there are few things quite as satisfying as ripping through

plaster with a sledgehammer.

At the end of the day, when the job was done and we were sweaty and coated with dust and insulation, we

got back in our cars and drove another twenty minutes or so towards Monument Valley Tribal Park. Before we had

reached the park, we took a turn onto a dirt road which wound us between a few scattered houses, over a creek,

and eventually into the heart of an idyllic canyon. Though we had all been happy to help our friend, the canyon

had been advertised as the real draw of our day of service–a secluded canyon away from the tourist traps of this

part of the reservation where we could camp, hike, and relax after a hard day’s work.

There were three layers of canyon that rose vertically from where we stopped, two of which were acces-

sible with a bit of free-climbing and boulder hopping. The third layer would have required ropes to scale. To the

south, up a short incline, was a leveled field planted with rows of squash and melons and corn. On the other side

of that field was a traditional Diné sweat lodge, dug deep into the ground and protected from the elements by

debarked branches engineered into a perfect cone shape.

And then there was our campsite, an expansive grove along a stream, covered in soft grass that was so

uncharacteristic of the desert southwest that I almost didn’t believe it. There were great oak trees that stretched

into the sky and shaded the ground and smaller trees dotted with little green balls, apricots in the early stages of

life, still safe from being plucked. And then there was the stream–rushing from the falls that spilled over a canyon

wall maybe a quarter mile to the south and east, it filled the air with a cool dampness that reminded me of spring

mornings back home.

We pitched our tents and started a fire before the sun dipped below the canyon walls that surrounded us,

changing into shorts and t-shirts and stretching out in the cool grass. There was no phone service to speak of in

the canyon, and so no distractions from our surroundings, and for that I was grateful. We cooked over the fire and

passed around a case of beer to share–technically an illegal activity on the reservation but we felt very far from

anyones rules. And then the sun went down, and the canyon lit up.

Lightning bugs dotted the grove that we occupied, little burning lights floating every few feet. Along the

horizon, on the other side of the stream, their lights pulsed in tandem as the beetles flitted about, greeting one

another, putting on a show for us. Unlike the lightning bugs I had grown accustomed to in my youth, these ones

oasis that they had made their home.

I was enthralled by this light show, but my companions were oblivious–they continued talking and laugh-

ing. Eventually I turned back to the conversation and laughed along with my friends, but I never quite forgot the

luminescence of those little beetles.