Hacker News

Also undisturbed grass is great for ground nesting birds! We saw them return when we left a field fallow in Ireland. Less helpful in suburbia admittedly

That's easy to say but anyone with a lawn is typically bound by local ordinances. I don't even live in a particularly nice area and I got a warning citation for some cool looking thistle I decided to let grow this year.

Or even a kid in the 90s and 2000s. The lightning bugs are mostly gone.

My kids think it's a big deal when they see one, and we live in a rural area with very little spraying happening.

I was born in and spent most of my life in the bay area before moving to Kansas City over 10 years ago (long story).

Seeing fireflies for the first time, in my 30s, was (and still is) magical.

30 years ago we caught them in glass jars. They were so dense in rural Missouri that you could catch several at a time by swinging an open container through the air.

In this rural area the closest kids get to cocaine is methamphetamine.

Don't forget about the arachnids.

Spiders are like senior members of nature's janitorial staff. I've seen them convert a periodic trail of ants into a mass grave within a few days.

Everyone I know who hires an exterminator has significantly worse issues than the occasional spider sighting. I don't actively encourage them but I also don't try to clean their homes out aggressively. I'll do yard work around them (they get until next time to move). Arachnids are unusually intelligent given their size and often seem to get the hint.

But wet have lots of cool up lighting to highlight your McMansion at 3AM!

Where I live the stars are still there but the fireflies are gone. Such a shame.

We’re always losing things, eg carrier pigeons.

But if you let the fallen leaves sit on your lawn all winter they are a matted wet mess in the spring and they kill your lawn. I blow mine to wooded areas at the edges of my property