Those hordes of invaders are fireflies, also known as lightning bugs. Actually they are neither bugs nor flies. They are beetles. Glow worms are lightning bug larvae. Because of the wet spring, we have a bumper crop of the critters, all out looking for love in all the right places, according to the Washington Post:
The tiny lights shone in Virginia, too. In Alexandria a figure chased a waist-high yellow light across her yard — driven to obsession by flashes of unrequited love.
“I’ll go, like, catch a male and bring it over to the females. It’s really ridiculous,” said Kate Pabis, 36, a guidance counselor. “I just almost, like, feel sexual frustration for them. It’s like, ‘Come on, people! Let’s get together!’ ”
In recent decades, scientists have been able to translate snippets of this firefly babel. They say the flashes are a muddle of conversations, usually several species communicating in the same meadow.
They’re talking — as animals usually are — about sex.
