It would be easy to call it magical, this river of pulsing yellow-white light that washes waist high across a woodland floor.
It is tempting to say – as watchers sometimes will – that synchronous fireflies speak to us somehow.
And we do heed their call, drawn by the thousands to stare and to sigh at their sparkling nocturnal pageant every spring.
But these strobe-light dispatches in the dark are not for us.
Lightning bugs – all of them, not just the sought-after synchronous species so recently unveiled at Grandfather Mountain to a wide-eyed, desperate-for-a-glimpse public – have crucial work to do.