Just the other day my son was chasing the fireflies in our front yard.

…That front yard I was feeling bad about not mowing because the weeds mixed in with the grass quickly grow tall flowers above the head.

I think I want to keep helping those blinky-bois.

Yeah, fireflies lay eggs on dead leaves. The ultra-clean suburban yards are killing firefly populations, because people keep raking up the fireflies breeding material and throwing it away in plastic trash bags. A perfectly kept lawn is an ecological wasteland, and suburban trends have expanded that wasteland for miles at a time. It’s no wonder fireflies have struggled to survive.

Want to see fireflies? Stop raking your lawn. If you don’t like the way the leaves look, mulch them with a lawn mower early in the season, so they can blend in with the grass. But don’t just fucking rake them up and throw them away.

Same

They’re back, and they’re happy with my mess of a lawn.

I don’t think my lawn will ever look like a golf course, there was an above ground pool at one point so one area is packed densely and full of gravel sized rocks.

We threw down some clover, there’s wild strawberry, one spot has mint (I’ve been told trying to remove it is a sisyphusian task). It’s cozy now, and I guess the fireflies like cozy, and I like watching them from my patio.

While it's better than keeping a barren monoculture lawn, keep in mind that letting things grow with no intervention will get you a lot of invasive species. If you want healthier habitat for your critters try to keep an eye on what's growing and replace the bad stuff with native options.

Yea, theres a big overgrown patch behind the house and we have them all over. It's nice to see. I like to sit out and watch them while the sun goes down. It's relaxing. Theres a bunch of other critters that come out around that time to so it's interesting. I watched a couple of raccoons take apart my neighbors bird feeder last night.

Another bug I haven't seen in forever is grasshoppers. I used to catch buckets of those things when I was a kid and I don't think I've seen more than a couple in years.

We just moved to a house with over an acre and a creek that runs through the back yard and we have them all over the place right now.

My dog had never seen them before and i caught him this week trying to eat them. One would flash and he'd chomp towards it, then another would and he seemed confused on how it got over there so fast and hed chomp that direction. It was precious

I mentioned in another comment that it must’ve been 8 to 10 years ago when I was sitting in the backyard of some bar in Brooklyn, in the middle of summer, where I saw the last one I ever saw. And I was sitting with a bunch of friends, and I pointed out that it was the only one, and that this might be the last one any of us ever see.

Now I made myself sad

I’ve only ever seen them at sea level, in warm and humid places, usually during the middle to later months of the summer.

For context, I grew up in the 80s and 90s as a kid, and that’s when you used to see a lot of them. But ever since then, they become more and more rare. I knew that, eventually, they’d probably go extinct. I realize this back in the 90s or something.

If I really think about it, the last time I saw one might’ve been between eight and 10 years ago. And I only saw one. And I was sitting in the backyard of a bar in Brooklyn, during a very hot humid summer night after it had been raining, and I was sitting with a bunch of friends and then mentioned to them that this may be the last firefly you ever see.

I really am sad that was right

I don’t think my state of mind has anything to do with whether or not I see fireflies, but the times and places I go haven’t really changed over the last 15 to 20 years. The number of fireflies I see at those times and in those places, on the other hand, has dramatically changed.