By Linda Cababa–Espinosa, Ed.D. I wish I were a scientist. But I am not. I have neither the academic preparation nor the association that could fill up my days with the vast knowledge I need to understand the so many interesting and frightening things happening in the world today. I just know that I’ve always loved flowers, colorful butterflies, double rainbows, the sound of bird songs, the sight of the full moon and the undulating waves of the ocean on a sunny, and mild windy day which, of course, does not make me a scientist but a simple lover of nature. However, wherever we turn today, we are assaulted by news or information concerning climate change that has resulted in great and devastating changes in the world and around us.  The changes occur slowly but surely and irretrievably. More than ten years ago, a scientist from Los Baños, Laguna, whose name I had forgotten, spoke in our school about changes that had taken place in Los Baños where he had lived all his life. He said that when he was younger, there were so many birds singing in the trees, so many grasshoppers, bees and butterflies darting from flower to flower.  But now he had said, you don’t see a single grasshopper, a single bee, a single butterfly or a single bird in the trees.  You can’t see even half a bird!  It was the reference to “half a bird” that arrested my attention so much.  It sounded so desperate because in reality, there is no such thing as “half a bird”.  And he proceeded to explain the loss of the beautiful winged creatures due to man’s abuse in the use of fertilizers and pesticides. So much has happened since that notable speech from that Los Baños scientist. And man has continued to abuse nature through illegal logging, mining, dynamite fishing, industrial pollution, and many other forms of destructive activities so that the depletion of our natural resources have resulted in more dire consequences like soil erosion, floods, storms surges and unbearable heat.  The increased heat in our planet have dried up some of our rivers, extended our deserts even wider, increased our temperatures and have caused weather imbalances as in snow or cubes of ice suddenly raining on some tropical countries. Terms like “global warming” and “greenhouse gases” are common now in trying to explain climate change which include melting of the polar ice caps thereby increasing the sea level which, according to an article I read some years ago, would one day make the seas deep enough to drown even the Hawaiian islands in the pacific, and also storm surges that create waves big and powerful enough to destroy buildings near the shore. But if there is anything that has become very personally disturbing to me in my simple and ignorant observations about nature as a non-scientist, it is the scarcity, if not the quiet disappearance of that nocturnal, fascinating lamplighter—the firefly. My earliest memories of the firefly were from a house we rented in Baliwasan in Zamboanga, when I was a kid, where a big bangkuro tree stood close on the side as neighbor.  The smelly ripe bangkuro fruits kept me away from the tree in the day time.  But at night when the whole tree glowed like an over lighted Christmas tree it was sheer joy just looking at the blinking millions and my child’s mind wondered where and how they got their lights.  There were nights when I would lift one side of my mosquito net in the hope that some would lose their way inside my net and light up my bed. Some nights, one or two did lose their way into my net.  I would then close my net with indescribable joy and happily trap them and take the trip to dreamland with the firm belief that I would be lighted on the way by their happy lanterns. Never mind that my grandfather used to say that trees with fireflies was an indication that these trees were habitats pf elemental (dwendes and kapres) creatures and fireflies were used to light up their homes. Because of this experience, fireflies have become a very memorable part of my childhood and I miss them like a little girl missing a favorite doll she had loved so much and lost. I haven’t seen fireflies in Zamboanga in a long, long time and every time it crosses my mind, and I remember, there is that dull ache of longing in the breast like wanting to see a long lost friend.  I learned that sometimes animals, like men, move away, migrate to find other environments more hospitable to their survival. Has the world then gotten so cruel to fireflies in Zamboanga City forcing them to move away? In my conversations with friends, I learned that there are still fireflies elsewhere.  A friend from the island of Mindoro said they don’t have the problem. So, where have all our fireflies gone?  If they are no longer in the trees we know in the city because of the noise and pollution, are they now in the trees in the mountains?  Or, are these tiny, delicate creatures now on the slow way to extinction the same way some animal species are.  And if they are, how do we protect to save them so that they will not be a part of man’s historical past but a thriving component of his natural present and future? While fireflies may not be that essential to the survival of mankind the way some animals are, the aesthetic value they provide in the appreciation of their nocturnal beauty definitely deserves man’s attention, protection and affection.