What's your favourite animal?

Hello Everyone,

I wrote a few posts while on vacation at the cottage. I'll be sending them out over the next couple of days.

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What's your favourite animal? The soaring eagle? The mighty lion? The awkward giraffe?

I can't say that I have a definitive favourite, but if forced to choose, I might say the firefly. Over the weekend, they were on full display at the cottage, and they got me thinking. Fireflies are the perfect combination of the sublime and the silly.

Few things are more beautiful than a forest scene at dusk with hundreds of points of light twirling and blinking through the trees. It's an ethereal scene, almost enough to make you believe in fairies and mythical forest creatures. It's also hard to take a good picture of it with a camera. Like it's too beautiful to capture.

And that all happens because fireflies have butts that light up.

Sometimes, mysterious yet beautiful things end up having mundane explanations that detract a bit from their appeal. Beautiful sunsets being caused by air pollution, for example. But for fireflies, the explanation just opens up a whole new realm of the amazing. Because their butts light up, and that's hilarious.

What's more, it's a mating thing, which makes it even better: They are attracting a partner. By making their butts glow.

That's why I love them. I could watch them, entranced, for hours ("could" because the mosquitoes at that hour are murderous), and at the same time, they are doing the insect equivalent of saying "Hey baby, check out my giant, glowing ass."

That will never not be funny.