As a child in the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah I watched as summer evenings were lighted in the crop fields, forest meadows and along desert streams by tiny insects which we called fireflies. Like tiny stars floating all around us these insects with their glowing bodies danced throughout the darkness each night.
Nights are all dark now. These precious little insects with their bodies aglow are gone.
When I learned to drive a car many years ago, I was saddened with each summer night drive that the lives of so many little insects searching for food or courtship had suddenly ended upon the grill and windshield of my passing vehicle.
Now my windshield and grill are never marked with the bodies of dead insects. Now I am saddened that those insects no longer even exist to search for food or courtship. They have died from chemical exposure in an environment which is too toxic for their fragile lives to continue.