Too bad about the fireflies

One of my most avid readers is, well, my mom. Since I’ve never quite been the best at staying in touch, she tells me that, because of the blog, she feels closer to me than she has in years (love you, mom). Needless to say, the post she liked the most was the one about entertaining my daughter Isabella. Mom said she showed it to her friends and they all wept (it's gratifying, as a writer, when you make someone cry, even if it’s just your mom).

Anyway, you may have read in another post that one of the things I do to entertain Isabella is chase fireflies. So how sad when Mom sent me an article from the Providence Journal saying that the firefly population is declining:

“No one seems to have made a scientific study of the critters’ dwindling ranks, but plenty of circumstantial evidence exists.

“‘Some species I haven’t seen in 15 years,’ says James Lloyd, one of the nation’s foremost firefly researchers.”

The problem, apparently, is loss of habitat thanks to suburban sprawl, the use of pesticides and maybe even light pollution:

“Besides the encroachment of man on their habitat, Lloyd thinks fireflies are also victims of light pollution. Streetlights, store signs and the nightly metropolitan glow can’t be good for a creature that relies on luminosity to get a date.”