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Lightning bugs!!
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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We used to have so many of them when I was a kid. Their numbers are dwindling. ๐ญ
Saw this just the other day here...
I saw that the other day too. It's just that 35 years ago, everyone still raked their lawns. Same as 35 years before that.
We are in the middle of an insect apocalypse.
Remember when you were little how many fucking moths there were? Couldn't keep the porch light on at night or they'd get in the house and you'd be finding moth carcasses all summer.
Now there's just a few. Hardly see any anymore.
Same for house flies, and bees. I used to have to go and spray for wasps every spring, I don't remember the last one I saw.
Remember when you needed a bug shield to drive on the highway?
Yes and yes (to the person you replied to). All I'm saying is that that narrative seems to be coalescing around "it's because people raked leaves." Does that play a part? Probably. But there's no way it's just that. It's far too pervasive to be "personal actions." The root cause has to be systemic.
It's not just the leaves, it's humans fucking with the environment, on a macro and micro scale. But that's harder to convey in a single panel
Agreed. But as someone who grew up with the Crying Indian, I am very wary of this kind of oversimplification. It was always, "make sure to cut the rings from the six pack of cans so the turtles don't get stuck," and not, "stop manufacturing death traps," or, Primus forbid, "stop treating the ocean and waterways in general like free waste disposal." It's still being actively astroturfed to this day (see also plastic straws). Case in point: a few years ago there was an "accidental chemical waste discharge" into a tributary of a major regional river that is used as a water source for much of the area. This was posted about in a lightly trafficked regional subreddit where a "hot" post might accumulate a few dozen upvotes over the course of a day and a handful of comments. This one reached over a hundred comments within hours.
And so on.
Messaging is important. The corporate class understands this. Hence trying to shift blame for every single systemic issue onto individuals. Plastic straws. You don't have the right to swim in clean water. Plastic bags. Fuel efficiency. Overnight delivery. Vote with your wallet. Overproduction. Recycling. And now raking leaves.
Want all that in a single panel? Zoom out from the raked lawn and show the silhouette of a factory belching smoke into the air and vomiting waste into a river in the background.
It's also humans continually expanding and building in previously undeveloped areas. It crowds out other species.
30 years ago it didnt matter if you raked your leaves because there were still plenty of areas for lightning bugs to migrate in from. But when everyone's surrounded by miles of suburbs the lightning bugs have further to go for you to see them
Raking leaves, expanding suburban sprawl (and therefore lawns), and the over-use of poisons, pesticides and fertilizers.
People have been raking leaves the whole time, so that's definitely not why.
i tell this to people all the time and they do not believe me
Grasshoppers too. I used to fill buckets with them as a kid. I haven't seen more than a few in the last decade.
The less I maintain my yard the more lightning bugs we get.
We do not maintain our back yard very well. I refuse to let these amazing insects disappear. We also seed for pollinators as well.
I tried to go this route with my small backyard. Unfortunately invasive vines (creeping Charlie and English ivy) got entrenched in very short order and outcompeted almost everything else. Pulling up the vines left nearly bare earth that eroded very quickly. If I ever get the money and the time, I'm going to have to add soil and seed and tend to it properly. For the time being, I left most of last season's leaves (mostly oak) and put down netting is some of the worst areas to try and keep the wind from stripping it bare(er). I'm hoping this leads to better water retention and soil conditions, and not just hiding spots for more vines. ๐
If possible, spread some local seed packs for pollinators on the bare dirt. Should be able to find some for your region/state. Better than letting the regular weeds take over.
That's the problem, nothing has taken over. It's just bare cracked clay because the soil is gone. My target for seeding is white clover, which technically isn't local but it's been around so long it might as well be. I can't let things grow too long unless I want to check for ticks every time I go outside. Clover seems to be a nice compromise. I've long ago given up the fight against dandelions, much to the neighbors' chagrin.
The yard is unfortunately pretty far down the priority list, which is annoying because it's probably one of the more satisfying projects once it's stabilized. But lack of funds and spoons dictates the effort must go elsewhere.
Clover is a good choice. Nothing wrong with a nitrogen fixer.
I never lived anywhere near them, never seen a bioluminescent creature in my life despite my wish to do so.
But when I was about 6 years old, I have a weird memory of my parents driving out to the deep desert with me and we parked off some dirt road and my dad got out of the truck for maybe a half hour. My mom seemed nervous. I saw a green light at the base of a bush about 15 feet away from the vehicle, just a tiny little bright green light, solid color, middle of nowhere.
I asked my mom what it was and she said "it's a glowworm" and I asked if we could go look at it and she snapped "NO don't go outside!" and I was absolutely boggled what was going on. My dad came back, they drove out of there without a word. One of those life mysteries we all have tucked away in our memory banks. I'm pretty sure I wasn't dreaming, but it's getting back there in years, probably was early 80's now. (This was the Sonoran desert in winter, there are no "glow worms" out there, and no bugs generally coming out in the cold anyway. I lived there for decades, there are no bioluminescent critters there.)
The yard spray folks come around every spring offering me a deal because they are spraying all my neighbor's yards. I'm the only yard with lighting bugs in the neighborhood.
A Silent Spring was supposed to be a warning, not a how-to.
I feel a little bad for the pest control guy that showed up at my house last spring. I majored in Biology, but did not graduate, my partner has their Masters in Biology and wrote their thesis on ecological damage from heavy metals.
Yeah, my yard looks a little unmanaged, sure, you can see bugs all over the milkweed, that's intentional. My yard was visited by thousands of bees (and sadly) a dozen or so butterflies daily. Because we had the insects and native plants, we had lots of small birds, and becuase we had lots of small birds, we were lucky enough to have a local Cooper's Hawk as a regular visitor nearly every day.
The guy offered to do indoor services for spiders and termites. I told him I don't have any of those because I have a bunch of basement centipedes. He said he could spray for those, and I was like "Why? They're harmless and they're the reason I don't have dangerous spiders and termites in the house".
My neighbours use to warn me about ticks every summer and how they proliferate in the grass. Since my yard has been a safe haven for lizards I haven't found a single tick.