Glow Little Glowworm

 

              

                 If you’re old enough, perhaps you remember the Mills Brothers singing ‘The Glow Worm’ from 1952, or perhaps like me you had parents that sang strange songs about insects to you as a child and you remember this song. If not, here is a small snippet that I found rather poignant:  

Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer

Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer

Lead us lest too far we wander

Love’s sweet voice is calling yonder

Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer

Hey there, don’t get dimmer, dimmer

Light the path below, above

And lead us on to love!

                Before I was born, my mom and dad went to New Zealand together. Sometimes I would get a good bedtime story about their adventures there, my favorite was the one where my dad told me about one of the most spectacular things he had ever seen… a cave filled with glowing worms!  I envisioned this place so often, and loved the idea of a cave filled with glowing worms hanging from the ceiling that when I was in 3^rd grade I did a school project based entirely on what my dad had told me. (This was during the dark ages, before you could “google image” everything and I had to creatively piece together facts from him and my own imagination to make a cave out of red pottery clay and glow-in-the-dark fabric puff paint.) I never forgot about this place and was determined to put it on my life-long to do list; I would get there someday… and today was finally the day!

                In Wiatomo, there are three caves: Rauakuri, Aranui, and Glowworm. Rauakuri and Glowworm are the only two that feature the bioluminescent buggers so we opted not to visit Aranui and focus on what we came all this way to see… GLOWWORMS!

                Actually, glowworm is a bit of a misnomer. As I explain, I’m sure you will understand why these details fail to make it into the glossy advertising brochures handed to tourists. The glowworm has a life cycle of 11 months, 9 of those months are spent in glowing worm form; which means it is less worm and more maggot than anything else. The glowmaggot hangs sticky mucus threads down from the ceiling so it can trap mosquitos and moths dumb enough to be attracted to its glowing light. Its glowing light is a result of chemical reactions during digestion… so basically the maggot has shinning shit. The glowing-shit-maggots will go through metamorphosis by wrapping themselves up in their spit-threads and transforming into a fungus fly, sexy no? After the glowing-shit-maggots turn into fungus flies, they only survive a few days in order to mate and lay a bunch of glowing-shit-maggot eggs. The horny fungus flies have no mouths or digestive systems so they enjoy their short time here on Earth in other ways… bow chicka bow bow.

                With all kidding aside, these glowworms are truly amazing creatures. When we entered Glowworm Cave, I expected to see a few lights dotting the ceiling rhythmically flickering on and off like fireflies.  Glowworms are not at all like fireflies; their light is constant (though it can be turned off over the course of 30 minutes by restricting the amount of air taken in, thus stopping the chemical reaction; and visa versa  is true, it will take 30 mins to start glowing again once they begin taking oxygen back in). I was absolutely taken aback by the magnitude of blue light emitted by each individual worm! Andrew and I joked that it simply was impossible and that they must have installed hundreds of tiny LEDs all over the ceiling. There were thousands of lights above our heads shining like stars in a teal-tinted galaxy.  The most breathtaking moment was when I realized I could just as clearly look down upon this galaxy being reflected back up at me from a sill pool of water. I imagined that this is what only astronauts get to see. They don’t crane their necks constantly looking up at the stars, they look around and down to see galaxies below them and as far as their eyes can see in any direction. In that moment, I was in outer space viewing constellations only I could name, a private universe here inside of the earth.