Stasia and Firefly, home

Whenever my granddaughter Stasia is staying with us in early summer, one activity is guaranteed to be on the agenda: a night walk to capture fireflies. This week has been perfect for getting out with the net after dusk, and this year, Stasia's now big and agile enough to do the capturing herself. Another thing that has grown is my knowledge of members of the insect family Lampyridae... thanks to a splendid new book titled Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies and a conversation I had with its author, the gracious and world-renowned lightning bug researcher Sara Lewis. The Tufts University biologist offers a nicely written and beautifully illustrated look at these magical beetles, and, besides an easy-to-digest introduction to firefly biology, much of which she's discovered, the book is filled with that sense of wonder kids always feel when they spot a firefly lighting up the night. Clearly, Stasia has the bug. So do I. And I hope neither of us ever grow up and out of it.