A passing glance at a slender tree by the Selai River one evening yielded the prize sighting of a red-nose lantern bug (Laternaria ruhli) that crept up to the canopy to spend the night unmolested. The next morning, the fulgorid had descended once more to eye level, and this time, paid little heed to attempts to pry its beauty onto sensors that reduce the hopper's nervous beauty to an image of plane mystery.
Not too far away on the first dusk, a trailside boulder shone with a spot of light so intense it would not fade under the fierce glare of light-emitting diodes. The yellow gleam came from the abdomen of a two-inch long glowworm that probed the debris on the rock with a retractile head bearing scythe-like mandibles. A female beetle that refuses to grow up, the creature is content to woo a flight of winged suitors to her luciferase charms. It's a lure I fail to fight as well as you beam at me with a gaze that wrecks my heart and rues each night with dreams ablaze with desire.
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