Whole families go buggy as the traditional firefly chase becomes a lighthearted way to make cash.

Michael Salge has trapped lightning in a bottle, or at least he’s trapped it in a net before putting it in a bottle. So has Brian Hintz, and James Allan and Renee Devries. Little apple-cheeked Danny Thorne, too.

It’s one of those magical, old-fashioned summer nights, when the moon’s just a sliver and a breeze rustles lazily through the honeysuckle. Sometime, between the roast chicken for dinner and the lemonade on the porch, just as the last of the sun slips behind the corn. . . .

And there they go. Twinkle. Twinkle twinkle. Blink blink blink. Twinkle. Blink.

And there they go. Michael and Brian and James and Renee and Danny and their brothers and sisters and moms and dads and even a grandparent or two, nets at the ready as they stalk the not-very-elusive firefly through Ron and Diane Salge’s soybean field.

Part of Ritual

Lightning bug light spectaculars are as much a part of the midsummer ritual in the nation’s heartland as county fairs and ice cream socials. At dusk, hordes of the tiny flying beetles go into a frenzy, using luminescent substances in their tail “lanterns” to flash silent mating calls in a kind of bug love semaphore.

Generations of youngsters have delighted over such displays. For decades, they have scooped fireflies into mayonnaise jars to make natural “night lights” for their bedrooms and painted shiny tattoos on their bodies with juice squeezed from the bugs. Many a pair of sweethearts has drawn glowing rings around their fingers and pretended to be married.

A Penny Apiece

But over the last several years, this cozy Iowa farm hamlet has also discovered how to turn fireflies into a cash crop--or at least a petty cash crop--shipping them by the thousands to Sigma Chemical Co. in St. Louis, which pays a bounty of a penny apiece. Sigma extracts luciferin and luciferase, the active ingredients that light up the bugs, and sells the chemicals to laboratories that use them in everything from cancer research to sewage treatment experiments.

Each summer, hundreds of people across the country snare fireflies in their spare time for Sigma, but few are as dedicated and productive as the folks in Allison. Organizers Martha and Roger Peterson, the retired manager of the Butler County rural electric cooperative, have put together a firefly network that at times has included 80 families in a town of only 1,000 people.

Bugs Easy to Snare

Each night from late June to mid-August, dozens of people reach for their fine mesh nets after supper and head to their back yards and fields. Prime catching time lasts only about 20 minutes, just as the sun sets, but the bugs are so plentiful that it’s easy for even children to snare 100 or more. The town record goes to Carol Burkhardt, who, on July 4, 1987, hauled in 1,182.

That was a vintage year for fireflies as Allison tallied a record 290,000. The count dipped in last year’s drought, but Martha Peterson expects that sometime this summer the town will tally its 1 millionth firefly since hunting began here in earnest back in 1983.

‘Nothing to Laugh at’

“That’s $10,000 for fireflies,” she said. “That’s nothing to laugh at.”

It’s not a jackpot either, but it’s nice pocket money. Last year’s firefly champions, Don and Sharon Niehaus, earned $300 from Sigma and treated their three sons to a weekend in St. Louis. And $600 of the firefly money went to the construction fund for the new community swimming pool.

This year, 9-year-old Brian Hintz plans to buy baseball cards with his firefly money. Danny Thorne, only 4, wants a remote control car. James Allan, 7, has his sights set on a Nintendo game.

Pennies in Flight

“It’s contagious,” confessed Linnea Hintz, Brian’s mother. “Now when you go down the road and see all those fireflies you just think ‘there go all those pennies.’ ”

Even in broad daylight, there are signs that Allison has gone a little buggy over lightning bugs. Children wear firefly hats, T-shirts and buttons. Senior citizens play something they call firefly bingo. There’s the annual “This Little Light of Mine” dinner to celebrate the close of firefly season.

Fireflies have even inspired some local bug verse, collected by Martha Peterson. Wrote Gail Wiegmann: “The firefly is a bug with a light, that shines oh so very bright, you try to catch them with a net, but they are sure stinkers to get.”

Or as Okalene and Ed Heuer put it: “We have a lot of fun running up and down the ditches, trying to catch the little sons-of. . . . “