fireflies and crickets

There's a creek about 50 meters away from the back of our house. surrounding it like walls are tress of mangoes, bananas and bamboos, homes of fireflies, crickets and geckos rarely seen at this part of Bulacan. When we just moved here and I was about to turn ten, they all wandered around our house as if they're in an expansive acacia tree. In years, relatives started to erect buildings to what now is a secondary school and a pest of a neighbor who had put up ugly lines of corrugated roofs and GI sheets for walls to house a poultry slaughter. Gradually, bugs (except from mosquitoes) and smallish reptiles disappeared. The other night, in my room, screened and airtight, there was a curious firefly floating about in the dark. In wonderment, I watched its light flicker as if it's battery is dying. I hear crickets, very load this time, like a lynchian droning sound, drone like the theremin in a mid century scifi/B movie, by this time Kafka's clerk is turning into a big roach. Again, a little past midnight, right in the middle of my sleep,I turn flapping my arm to face left, opened my eyes and saw the poor thing on my pillow near the tip of my nose lying there helplessly, still twinkling. I must have hit it with my hand. Lights more weakly, intervals more erratic than the broken Christmas light of our neighbor. Several days I walked outside and see 2-3 fireflies around small trees.Their natural habitat must have immensely disturbed by the flood Ondoy and were displaced. Anyways, you are all welcome to rest on my pillow.