Fewer Fireflies?

A summer emblem grows scarce

by Jeff Mortimer

posted 8/6/2009

"Suddenly, they're not there," says Scio Township resident Eleanor Lord.

When Lord and her husband, Tony, immigrated to the United States four years ago, they were delighted by the nightly display of fireflies, the beguiling beetles who decorate summer yards with their bioluminescent mating signals. "We don't have them in the U.K.," she says. "They're just magical. We saw a lot in our garden that first year." But this year, she says, "we sat on our deck for something like three hours the other night and saw four."

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