Great-Grandpa’s Moths (May 10)

Almost immediately nocturnal insects began approaching without fear. Fireflies were the first to emerge. Not long afterwards, broad-winged moths glided by. They were hard to make out in the shadows, but Granny pulled me towards her to whisper the pleasure they brought. “My father knew every kind where we used to live.” I could tell how proud she was even though in one respect his expertise did not match her own. “You know, our Canadian fireflies flummoxed him entirely. He’d never seen them until he stayed here before the Second War.” I was astonished.

“You mean, there aren’t any in England?”

“No, there aren’t. Only glow worms.” She helped me past my bewilderment. “Both of them shine green at night. But glow worms can’t fly. They climb on plants. Actually, they’re bugs, not worms.”

“Still, you can see them in the dark?”

“Oh, yes. Just the same as here. But I can tell you, he wrote back straight away to let Great-Grandma know what we had on this side of the Atlantic.”

Transatlantic parallels like that – not only fireflies and glow worms, but others like two kinds of ‘robins’ or ‘blackbirds’ – are reminders that cross-cultural similarities are rarely if ever exact. Nothing is quite that simple! Have you encountered other such misleading correspondences? For instance, different kinds of ‘bacon’, bluebells’, or ‘pancakes’ and so on? If so, please describe one or two as a Comment, and share what effect they had on you.

(Illustration generated by AI)