Baby, Let Your Light Shine Down on Me



April Firefly

A warm breeze caressed my face as I walked the quarter-mile from our home to the road this evening.  I found myself surrounded by a sea of moving lights.  The first lightning bugs of the season, out in force.

According to the Entomology section of the National Museum of Natural History, our earth is inhabited by an estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects. While my share of the National Debt is estimated to be $50,000 and growing, my proportional share of the insect world is 200,000,000, a few thousand of which are lighting up the field behind our home at this very moment. 

According to the article, if the offspring of a single pair of houseflies all survived a single 5 month season, the family reunion would need place settings for 190 quintillion.  The largest insect in the world is thought to be theTitanus giganteus Beetle which reaches lengths of approximately 6 1/2 inches. While these are reputed to live only in Brazil, I'm fairly certain one landed on my shoulder one evening in Osage Beach while I was sitting outside a frozen custard stand enjoying a strawanna (for the potassium).

A New York Times article recently estimated that the world holds 300 pounds of insects for every pound of humans.  That inspired Richard Vaughn to say, ''We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics".