Standing in the outdoor shower the other night, gloriously resurrected (the nozzle, not the occupant) in time for the no-breeze oppression of the epic “heat dome,” I couldn’t tell what that glow was as it rose slowly in the distance. A civilian aircraft departing our loved, hated local airport, bound for helipads or landing strips to the west? A “Close Encounters”-style visitor from another world hightailing it out of here after one horrified look?
It was in truth the largest firefly I’d ever seen.
Without trying, in fact by doing the opposite of trying, I seem to have established the most fertile grounds for these charming insects in the entirety of densely populated Sag Harbor’s bucolic suburb — Noyac.
The front lawn swarms with this shifting, blinking constellation. I can’t say I’ve seen its like before, and the reason has to be benign neglect, meaning my carefully calibrated program of mowing only twice a month. No fuss, no muss, as the TV ads used to say, no spraying for ticks, no herbicides, no fertilizer, not even any watering, and it looks just fine. Maybe more important, no silly uplighting of trees or shrubs, no gratuitous ground-level driveway lights. Just God’s green earth.
Hell, I didn’t even go after the industrious rodent that not long ago burrowed beneath nearly every square foot of lawn, front and back. It was extensive. The Royal Engineers’ tunnelers of the First World War couldn’t have figured it out.
Apparently satisfied of its obsession, the creature departed of its own accord, leaving behind two rabbits, a box turtle, chipmunks, wild turkeys, the inevitable passing deer, any number of winding, coiling garter snakes, a cute resident wren in a kid-made birdhouse, and at the top of the chain, if there were a chain and not simply a menagerie, the screeching red-tailed hawk high in a tree just over the stockade fence.
And so, what’s endangered? Fireflies are certainly diminishing in number, it’s said, like everything good these days. Here’s hoping this little Noyac oasis is something more than a rest stop on the way to lights out.