lightning bugs

One of my many favorite childhood memories is all (or most) of my cousins spending the night at my grandparent's house. Rea-Rea (my grandmother) would give us one of her quart-sized canning jars, poke holes in the top of the lid with a knife, and we would head outside to capture the tiny bugs that had lightning in their bottoms. Who needed a nightlight when you had such majestic creatures? Of course, the boys always got to keep in THEIR room because they were the ones who handled the lid (you know, us silly girls -okay, me - would be in too big of a hurry to get the bug in properly and accidentally smush it) AND those lightning bugs could somehow shrink themselves and crawl out the holes during the night. Of course the bugs were always dead the next morning, and we had to start again the next night. The one time we girls convinced them that we COULD keep the bugs in our room, and also manage it so they didn't get out AND would stay alive, they all died. I lost quite a bit of interest in keeping them after that.
I saw my first lightning bug of the summer tonight, and I had to resist the urge to chase after it. But the thrill of the tiny light...it's still there.