Fireflies

Yet another wonderful thing about PA is the fireflies. My kids have never seen a firefly before. I had forgotten how cool they are. So, we planned that on Sundays, (if we all took naps after church) we could stay up late and catch fireflies in jars. It was so fun. Fortunately, it's not hard to catch them. Leah was the first one to catch one. Unfortunately for the firefly, it didn't survive the encounter. She got better at it though.

On our last Sunday, I told the kids they could catch as many as they could and then keep them overnight in their room. It was Eli's idea to use their small jars to collect them initially, then transfer them to a very big plastic jar. We had such a fun time and were very successful. I think we caught about 20. I think the fireflies were happy about it too.

In case you didn't know, fireflies light up at night to attract a mate. Apparently, we helped them out a bit with that task. At one point their was a tight cluster of 6 fireflies in our big jar. Eli asked what they were doing. I told them they were making friends with each other, but we all know what they were really doing.

Aside from that little scene, it was a magical experience for the kids. I'm so glad they go to do something that I enjoyed doing when I was little (catching fireflies that is! not watching them "make friends").

This is a picture of some of the fireflies crawling on the top of the jar. We put plastic wrap over the top and punched little wholes in it so they could breathe.