Possibly my new favorite bug

A bee

I really love honey bees. They're cute, striped, and fuzzy, and they make nice humming noises. They make HONEY, which is just amazing. And they go from flower to flower, pollinating and collecting nectar, and they're just so industrious and lovely.
But tonight we went out to the park to look at fireflies. And I might have to make room on my "favorites" shelf for these little guys. They're so cool! I mean, how many animals fly around at night and light up? Not many. They twinkle across the fields and in the forests like little stars lighting up the night. I pretty much love them.

Fireflies

I told Penny she would have to take a nap so we could go out tonight to look for fireflies. She hasn't taken daily naps since last November. But today she got her toy ponies and horse, lined them up on her pillow beside her, and lay down for a nap. I told her she just needed to stay in there until the timer rang. It was quiet for the whole 20 minutes, so I was sure she had nodded off. But when I peeked in, she was still lying in bed, ponies still lying beside her on the pillow, looking at me with her dark brown eyes. "I just can't go to sleep." She gave it her best shot, though. So we went anyway. She was nervous about it all afternoon, though. She kept telling me she didn't want to go, because the fireflies are scary.
If I keep the girls up past their bedtime at home, they just get cranky and awful. But they were really good on our walk. Our destination was the park, but along the way we started seeing the fireflies. I saw a blinking light that I swore was a firefly, but it didn't move, and the light kept turning on and off pretty regularly. I decided it must have been a lawn ornament of some sort, but when I leaned over to investigate, it was actually a firefly stuck in a spiderweb being eaten by a spider. Wow, that was more nature than I thought we'd be seeing on our innocuous firefly walk!
I tried to be impartial. After all, we read books about the Very Busy Spider making her web to catch flies. I explained that the spider was going to eat the fly for his dinner, and it was sad for the firefly but it was probably a good thing for the spider. Penny brought up the Mickey Mouse cartoon where he sprays the fly with some pink juice and the fly grows extra strong to beat up the spider. Sadly, I didn't have any magical pink juice.
We walked through the park, and I caught a couple fireflies to show the girls. Penny was interested but kept her distance. Naomi shrieked a little and told me she was scared. I think next time we go, we'll bring a jar to look at them in.
Can you tell I grew up in the western US? I'm honestly just glad I have little girls to take out on a firefly search, because I would look a little silly getting that excited over a bug if people didn't think it was only for the sake of my children.