Unlike the blinking yellow-ish light of the big dipper fireflies Kentuckians might see in their backyard, Appalachian blue-ghost fireflies leave their light on for several seconds, leaving a pale trail of blueish-green light behind them.
On a recent June evening, illuminated only by the nearly-full moon, Kelly Vowels and Bill Napper swung their nets to catch a few of the rare blue-ghost fireflies darting between the trees and across the trail in Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, a privately-owned 16,000 acre nature preserve and arboretum in Clermont, just a half-hour south of Louisville.
Vowels, Bernheim’s research coordinator, held up her net after catching one of the little beetles. It still shone its ghostly light as she shook out a plastic bag to hold him…