The rain mostly managed to fall in between the times when I was out hiking with my field class today. It soaked the ground and enticed a fair amount of newts and Banana slugs to come out and play.

On the night hike, I once again fed wintergreen lifesavers to the kids, telling them that they were eating freeze dried glow worms. Many of them believed me. This is something we do every week. Different field instructors make up different stories, some of them more believable than others. I always start my story by mentioning the time I found a glow worm during a night hike, and then continue it by talking about how I mentioned it to an entomologist friend who just happens to be studying glow worms. The glow worms he's studying are being raised on mint leaves. It's their favorite food. Tonight I added a bit about how he's also a taxonomist who freeze dries the glow worms so he can extract their DNA in order to decide how to classify them. The upshot of the story is that one day he accidentally eats one and discovers that it tastes wonderfully minty. Later he discovers that they give off sparks when he bites down on them in the dark.

I tell the kids that my friend gave me some of the glow worms. I then offer them around. Every week, there are a few kids who won't eat them.

The sparking is a phenomenon called tribo luminescence. Try it.