It’s Full of Stars

There are no lightning bugs in Houston.

No fireflies.

No glow worms. 

Whatever you want to call them, I really don’t care. I know what you’ll say:  they were always called glow worms until after the great beetle civil rights movement of the Sixties, when they got all uppity and started wanting to be called fireflies. “Glow worms was our larval name,” they shouted as they marched/flew.

And then, just as soon as everyone finally adjusted to that, they upped and changed it to lightning bugs. Heaven knows, we all turn red and start rolling our eyes at family reunions when Grandpa is sitting there at the dinner table, still insisting on calling them glow worms after all these years.

As far as I’m concerned, you can call them whatever you want.  But don’t call them that in Houston, because buddy, they just ain’t here.

No one seems to know why. I have researched it a little and even spoken of the marked lack of lightning bug activity in the greater Houston metropolitan area with older residents who insist that the city used to be home to the highly unusual nocturnal beetle.

To tell you the truth, though, I’m not sure I believe them. I mean, I’ve been here a long, long time now. I’m relatively old, you know? I’m old enough that I can even remember when Eddie Murphy was moderately funny.

Me, I remember parachute pants.  I remember Members Only jackets.  But no matter how long I stick around, I can’t ever remember seeing a lightning bug in the city of Houston.

So where are the lightning bugs? I, for one, would like to find out.

In olden times, way back before who knows when, a searcher after the great mysteries of life would probably have gone east, way East with a capital “E”, climbing cloud-nimbused mountain peaks in pursuit of a wise man or some of them elusive Greek furies.  Seeking answers and all that good stuff.

Fortunately, this is the 21^st Century, and I can just type my deepest existential ponderings into Google.  It’s way less physically taxing and they don’t hit you up for cash on the way out of the tent.

Back when Pete Townsend honored the great guru Meher Baba, he wrote Tommy. When he honored the great guru Google, he was arrested for possession of child porn.  So you can decide which one is superior.

The great guru Google tells me there’s already another Houston attorney pondering the very same thing as me!  Oh, this attorney has his theories about what’s happened to the bugs – city spray programs, the downtown lights(?), the high temperatures, and even fire ants!  None of those bold hypotheses sounds right to me. 

Here’s the thing: They have lightning bugs just a few dozen miles to the north of the city. There are even some that take up residence around my lakehouse.

Not a lot, certainly not epic numbers. Not enough to raise a firefly posse, by any means. If my lakehouse were in, say, Pennsylvania or Tennessee or Iowa, people would laugh and point at how few lightning bugs were lighting up my lawn. 

But there are some lightning bugs, just the same.  Okay, not yet. Not for a few weeks.  They’ll be there by mid-May, or thereabouts. You wait and see.

And when they’re there – way up north, out around my lakehouse, I mean – I’m going to be there, too.

   

When I’m in Houston, where I am right now, less than a mile from downtown with a view of that skyline that I’m sure pumps up the value of my property untold thousands of dollars, when I’m up the road and out of sight and watching all those aforementioned lightning bugs?

I can see more than Houston’s usual one star.  More than the other one that joins the first one on exceptionally clear nights.

Up there at the lakehouse? Stars. Plural!  And not just a little plural. Very plural. Very, very plural, even.

More stars than lightning bugs. More stars than blades of grass or weeds or maybe even fire ants. Little bright spots that have traveled for years at the speed of light just to enter my cornea and remind me how tiny I am.

You know, all that corny mysticky shit.

But corny or not, I’m about to see it all. For thirty, maybe forty nights, I’m going to sit out in my yard up in the country and I’m going to look out from the little place where gravity is sticking me to the ground.

I’ll be the one clutching the empty mayonnaise jar with air holes punched in the lid.

And I’m going to look out and I’m going to count them.  All of them. The lightning bugs and the stars. And don’t give me that Carl Sagan “billions and billions” bullshit, because I’ll do it, damn you. I know how many a brazillion is.

I’ve busted loose. I’ve found the escape hatch.  It won’t take long before the little lights around me and the little lights above have me completely outnumbered and surrounded. 

I mean, my God: It’s full of stars…

 

[END OF SEASON 4]

They say lightning bugs never strike the same place twice...