On January 29th at about 1:30 in the morning I was looking out the window of
our front door toward the road in hopes of catching a glimpse of a very
noisy automobile/truck that had been frequenting our road in the wee hours,
racing its engine and speeding past the house. As I stood there staring into
the darkness I thought that I saw a tiny light blink out of the corner of my
eye. Was it the reflection of a house light? Couldn't be . . . the house was
in complete darkness. I gazed in that direction again and sure enough a tiny
sparkle of light came from the main beam along the front roof of our porch.
My God, I thought, it can't be a lightning bug it's the end of January and
14 degrees. I waited. In about 20 seconds it flashed again this time it was
closer and appeared to be hovering about 3 feet from my nose which by this
time was pressed against the pane. It is a firefly! I watched not believing
my eyes. How could this be? It continued with its flashing every 20 seconds,
occasionally returning to its spot on the beam then back to its hovering
position in the middle of the porch. I called to my wife and said "you're
not going to believe this but there is a firefly blinking on our porch". She
was not about to leave the warmth of her bed to see my "find", so the next
night she checked it out herself and saw exactly the same ritual that I had
witnessed. Ten days later this strange little insect is still making its
nightly appearance in the same location on our front porch. 
	Has anyone out there heard of or witnessed such a behavior in the
middle of winter? 

Al Merritt 
W. Brattleboro, VT
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