Alex, AspieMartian:
Thanks! This is an interesting thing in itself, and it's nice to know that I hadn't been seeing (or rather, smelling) things then.
Yes, bioluminscence is mighty fascinating. One of the things that struck me is how efficient it is - from what I've read, it looks like a firefly will convert around 90 percent of its energy into light, while an incandescent bulb will convert only around 10 percent and release the rest as heat. Its mechanisms are interesting too, it looks like some organisms such as fireflies produce light due to chemical reactions in their own bodies, while others are symbiotic with specific bacteria which aid them.
AspieMartian, it looks like we're quite similar. I didn't catch many bugs as a child, but it was probably because I wasn't allowed to play outside too much (at least, not unsupervised). If we had lived somewhere in the countryside and I could be outdoors more often, I think I'd end up doing exactly the same. I did pick up injured butterflies (though I was actually phobic of them at the time), bring them home and put them in a shelter I'd made on my balcony with cellophane stretched over a table like a tent. Then I'd wait and see if they recovered and flew away.