TIDBITS: Andy Heffner of Ormsby called to talk about fireflies and springs.

Last week he let his little dogs out in the yard, and they started to make quite a ruckus.

“They were barking and barking,” he said.

He wondered what in the world could cause them to get so excited.

“You’ll never guess. Lightning bugs. They were having a fit because of the bugs.”

Sure enough, when Andy turned on the outdoor light — drowning out the light of the fireflies — the barking stopped. These were the first fireflies he has seen this summer, he noted.

Also, reading recent columns that mentioned Kennedy Springs got Andy thinking about other local springs.

For instance, he recalls there once was a spring on High Street Extension just before Minard Run.

“People used to drive out there to get nice, cold fresh water,” he said.

He was just a child when the spring was closed, but he believes the reason it closed was another child, about 10 or 12 years old, was hit by a vehicle there while carrying water. He doesn’t remember if the child was injured or if the child died, but he said you can still see where the pull-off was to get to the spring.

Also, an “outstanding spring” on Minard Run hill has also closed.

They said the water was contaminated there because of drilling,” according to Andy, who added that he believes the people using the spring “messed up the traffic flow.”

Back around the year 2000, Andy would stop at a spring on Shep Run on his lunch break when he was doing road work for Bradford Township. He remember picking a handful of watercress that grew at the spring to eat with his lunch — which surprised his coworkers who didn’t know what the plant was.

He used to go to a spring on Buchanan Hollow when he and his wife were first married and lived on North Kendall Avenue. They would make regular trips there.

“Boy, that water was good. Ice cold.”

Eventually the spring dried up. He found out that the spring wasn’t really a spring at all — it was “overflow from a water line that had sprung a leak. When the leak was found and fixed, the source of water was gone.

He doesn’t know if a spring that was near the Corydon Township Firehall on West Washington Street is still there, but Bordell Road “still has a marvelous spring running.”

When he was a kid, his dad suggested using coconut shells as drinking cups when visiting one spring they found that had water with a unique sweet taste.