Iliana Ortiz of Columbia never thought one of her favorite summer pastimes would eventually pay off, but it did on Wednesday when an agent for an Oak Ridge company paid her $2.50 for five grams of fireflies she collected in her grandmother’s backyard.
The 9-year-old watched intently as agent Dwight Sullivan carefully poured a handful of frozen bugs from a plastic bag into a paper cup. He then put the cup on the scales and noted the results on his clipboard.
“I caught them with my hands. I used a net one night, but I like using my hands,” Ortiz said. “I put them in a jar and then into the freezer, next to the ice cream.”
Ortiz and her 6-year-0ld sister, Melina, took care of business while their grandmother waited in the van outside the Columbia No. 1 Fire Station. Melina Ortiz earned $1 for her collection.
Sullivan stopped in Columbia for only 30 minutes on Wednesday. His entire operation consisted of a set of scales, a card table, a chair, a cooler, and a box of files.
The Firefly Project of Tennessee pays for a certain type of firefly and materials contained inside them to test the safety of food. The enzyme luciferase also is used by some other scientists as a genetic marker tag to search for potentially revolutionary treatments for such diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, cystic fibrosis and some cancers.
This year the price of fireflies jumped to 50 cents per gram or $14.20 per ounce — about $2 per 100 average size bugs.
Within the first 15 minutes of Wednesday’s collection time, Sullivan had three customers — all children accompanied by a grandmother.
Aiden Compton, 4, of Columbia said his mother used an orange net to help him catch a gram of lightning bugs.
“I had a blue net,” he said. “I saw a bunch of them. They hide from us.”
Compton received five shiny dimes for his efforts.
Shirley Brooks dropped off a container of lightning bugs her 14-year-old grandson Payton Craig caught. He wanted to catch more, she said, but he became ill and had to have ear surgery.
“I just cleared a shelf in the freezer and put them in,” she said.