Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for May 26, 2024

In Pennsylvania, where they are our official state insect (Photorus pennsylvanica), most of us call them “lightning bugs”!

Turn off your outdoor lights. Light pollution drowns out their mating signals.

I love fire flies/lightening bugs.

In the Smokies, there are synchronized lightning bugs that appear around this time of year and people flock to see them. They flash at the same time. I haven’t personally seen them, but heard the reports. The NPS holds a lottery for a chance to see them. I didn’t win, will try again next year.

Would some Glow Worms help aerate the garden soil? (song reference)

Help a neighbor out? I’m not well versed in languages. I imagine they say “Lucy air NAG as.” Is this close? Thanks.

Great series that FOX pulled the plug on out of sheer stupidity…

Love them, but even though we have a great garden and plenty of old leaves and rotting wood their numbers still seem to go down each year.

& leave at least a 3′×4′ area of semi to tall grass! (undisturbed)

Would have made a good Earth Day, comic.

Saw our first lighting-flies / fire-bugs of the season, a few nights ago. I’m rarely outdoors late enough & it was a treat!

There was an article in Smithsonian a few months back about a scientist in New Jersey studying them. It’s a good read if you can find it.

Here in the dry western US, we’ve never had lightening bugs. Another good reason to visit relatives who live in the midwest!

Went I went to Arkansas to camp in the woods for the total eclipse (it was great!), there were fireflies, which I hadn’t seen since I was a kid in Wisconsin. When the first one came out and clung to a tree, I went right up to it and went OMG! Then others started coming out. It was magical.

I have leaf piles around the property I renew every fall. We don’t use chemicals. So we still get a good number of fireflies every year.

Why do the fireflies have to die so soon?

Soundtrack for today’s strip: Fireflies by Owl City youtube .com / watch?v=psuRGfAaju4

Living in California it’s one of the things I miss about living in New York.

This was a good one, Sergio.

Dad should not be any older than his early 40s meaning he would have ben a kid in the 90s. Going way back in time to the 60s there was massive use of pesticides including DDT. Smog was worse with leaded gasoline and acid rain.

Back in 2004 I took my girls (plus my mom who had flown in from Arizona-the last time I saw her before she passed in 2016) up to Jersey to meet my family. I hadn’t been there since 1981. Even though I was born there (father was in Nam, mom went home to have me) I was raised elsewhere (all over the place). We arrived at 3 am. There were fireflies everywhere! Maybe NC is too far south or we just hadn’t been out at the right time. It was the first time for my girls to see them. It truly was magical as seen through the eyes of a 10 year old.

I used to see quite a few of them during the season. I called it the Royal Fireworks Show as one by one, they would light up an my cats would just sit on their screened in porch and gaze in wild wonderment. I have seen fewer an fewer the past several years :(

I saw one just yesterday. Always magical.

Lightning Bug or Firefly, the insect is blessed with two cool names.