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Column: Firefly lanterns and farmer’s buried treasure

Great Outdoors by James Murray
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When we were kids, now so long ago, on certain warm sultry summer evenings, just as the sun was starting to slip down over the horizon, we would head out into the night to capture fireflies in a bottle.

The idea was to collect enough so that, en masse, they would glow like a lantern. None of us ever managed to collect enough fireflies to see in the dark, never mind light our way home.

According to Wikipedia, “Lampyridae are a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are soft-bodied beetles that are commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous use of chemically produced bioluminescence light from the lower abdomen during twilight to attract mates or prey.”

Last week a friend and I spent an afternoon searching some old farm building with our metal detectors. It seemed like a good way to spend some time outdoors and still be able to maintain social distancing. Two hours or so of searching and all we managed to locate was a number of spent .22 casings, two mismatched halves of rusted metal hinges, a flattened out rusted tobacco tin and a couple of rusted and bent two-inch nails.

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Time and rust sure can take its toll on anything metal.

Not much for all the time and effort I guess. However, as I made my way along an old fence line the metal detector began beep. Digging down about 10 inches, I unearthed an intact mason jar. I have to admit that my heart began to pound a little with excitement. How many times had I read that in the ‘old days,’ farmers would often put their money in a mason jar and bury it beside a designated fence post so it would be safe – from what I’m not altogether sure though. The jar turned out to be empty.

I mention catching fireflies in a bottle and finding that mason jar along the fence line simply because both experiences, although promising, both turned out to be more myth than fact. That’s life I guess.

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