2808: Daytime Firefly

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Daytime Firefly

Title text: Mr. Jones, watch out for Ms. Lenhart! She's from genus Photuris!

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by MR. JONES. Believe in me / Help me believe in anything / 'Cause I wanna be someone who believes / Yeah / [Chorus] If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Some things are associated with being seen so much in a given context that it can be surprising to see them anywhere else. This comic starts with the initially trivial incident of a famously night-time outdoor insect, a firefly, being discovered indoors and during the day.

This quickly becomes another typical observation, that of the experience of a schoolchild seeing someone, who they normally only encounter in the classroom, 'in the real world'. This may not be strange in small, close-knit communities, but can still be seen as extraordinary, and is sometimes an event that happens after the child (and/or teacher) has left the school and is a sign that they are now more equal citizens rather than tutor and student with vastly different lives outside of education.

Unlike fireflies, teachers generally do not bioluminesce or flit around in the open air.^{[citation needed]} But that scenario is where the analogy quickly turns, imagining Mr Jones (the teacher) behaving like such an insect. Such an encounter would be at least as awkward as bumping into a them in a semi-social situation, and the conversation you'd be having could be terribly stilted.

The title text continues the conversation with some sage advice, to the firefly-teacher, to avoid Miss Lenhart, another teacher whom they believe to belong to an aggressively mimicking genus of predatory firefly and thus a potential danger to his existence, as the females of that species copy the blinking mating patterns of other firefly species in order to lure in the males of those species to be eaten. The speaker is clearly concerned that Mr. Jones will be fooled by Ms. Lenhart and then cannibalized.

Transcript

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Discussion

Do fireflies still blink when it's light out? If not, I'm not sure how someone could easily tell that some random flying insect is a firefly. Barmar (talk) 23:39, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

I've seen some indoors, flashing. I think it might have been in a dim room. But really it's not that hard to tell them from other common insects even without flashing. I would think you can differentiate bees, flies, lady bugs, mosquitoes, etc. 172.70.126.98 00:25, 29 July 2023 (UTC)Pat

It's not easy if you never saw any clearly. Ok, from flies and bees, sure, but from other beetles ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 01:36, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

It's not too hard if you know what to look for - the most distinguishing feature from other beetles is their translucent abdomen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly#/media/File:Firefly_composite.jpg 172.70.111.137 14:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Huge kudos to whoever made that Counting Crows reference in the "incomplete" box. Trogdor147 (talk) 02:12, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Is it cannibalism if the predator is a different species? Perhaps "pseudo-cannabilzed"Boatster (talk) 02:24, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Have there been a lot of firefly comics recently, or am I misremembering? R128 (talk) 03:56, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

There was one earlier this month (#2802). Trogdor147 (talk) 02:42, 30 July 2023 (UTC)