In 2023, We Rise

New Year's Eve is an arbitrary human human holiday. But rebirth is real in the wild.

Every lightning bug you saw glowing in the night this summer is now dead.

In fact, they’ve been dead for months, meaning every single living member of those firefly species are now juveniles (also called larvae), pupae, or eggs.*

The old and wizened adults? Nothing but dust. Or maybe spider poop.

Don’t worry though, this is how it’s supposed to go. While humans all over the world are making New Year’s Resolutions right now, animals are actually out there in the midst of phoenix-like rebirth.

Of course, the firefly is no more magical than you or I, but they are one of many creatures that practices a life strategy known as metamorphosis. Those little flashing fire-butts you see in the summer? They’re just the beetle’s final form—a form that tends to only last around two weeks, by the way. It’s weird, since we tend to think about our time as adults as being the dominant part of our lives, but for lots of animals, that last stage is just a brief, final act before the curtain call.

Don’t feel bad for the fireflies though. Before those last two weeks as aerial night lights, they live as ravenous, subterranean larvae that wiggle through the soil on the hunt for earthworms, which they enveomate and then slurp up like a milkshake. And it’s good work, if you can get it. Many species spend several years as larvae.

So if these last few years have been particularly hard on you and yours, remember, this may not be your final form.

There’s still time to transform. Time to burst out of your exoskeleton and emerge into the world above as something entirely new. Time to trade in your pincers and your venom and embrace the ability to create neon in the night.

Time to spread your wings and rise.

*I say “those species” because there are, in fact, some species known as “dark fireflies” that don’t flash and do overwinter as adults. Firefly scientist extraordinaire Sara Lewis has a post about them if you’d like to learn more though.

Happy New Year’s Eve!

In 2023, SORT OF FUNNY FIELD GUIDES kicks into overdrive. And everyone is invited to come along! Tell your friends. Tell your grandma. Tell your kids’ teachers and your barista and your buddy, Dale, who thinks he saw Bigfoot that one time.