Perfect Night For Fireflies

Last night's  hot, humid, calm air was perfect for fireflies and they knew it.

In the GNC, County Route 2, from  Mosquito Point to Prattsville, climbs the shoulders of Mt Vly and then takes a long, windy descent, past farm land, forest preserve and a few scattered homes until it rejoins Route 23 near the border with Delaware County.  As I drove it after dark last night, short darts of light punctuated the road, the lawns and the fields.  They were short flashes, but there were so many of them, that it had a disco-ball effect on me. I pulled over near Harry Peckham Road and decided to count them.

To be sure I didn't count the same firefly twice, I had to catch it and tag it with a sequence number.  I searched the car for something to use for this purpose, and all I could find was an old roll of raffle tickets used to track door prize chances.  The numbered tickets went up to 1,000, so I figured I could tag 1,000 and then extrapolate from there based on the volume of atmosphere surrounding Mt Vly.

I caught the first firefly and attached the tag to it with a rubber band from the glove compartment.  Of course - I should have known - the tag was too heavy for the firefly to lift off.  So, I had to rip the raffle tickets into four pieces, thereby having enough tags for 4,000 fireflies.  I soon ran out of rubber bands and so I used little pieces of  bubble gum for the rest.  This worked well enough, though the flies seemed a bit wobbly as they flew away.

When I had completed tagging 3,999 and looked out over the fields, it seemed as if I hadn't accomplished a damn thing -- there were still hundreds and hundreds -- perhaps thousands more.  So, I said to Number 4,000, "There are so many of you guys...how many of you are there?"  I released the fly and was about to drive away, thinking how foolish I was to try to count fireflies in the GNC.

As I walked toward the car, I stopped to enjoy another deep breath of the sweet, oxygen-rich air.  There above me in the cloudless sky, the fireflies had formed 9,999,999,999,996,000 in blinking dots.