Thursday, September 10, 2009

An Ant in the Sun

Last night my son called me into his room to show me a fire ant he killed. "I smashed it against the wall, Mom," he said proudly. He picked up the crumpled insect to show me.

"That's not a fire ant," I said. "Fire ants are red; that one is black." He had a look of horror on his face. He didn't want to believe he killed an innocent "friendly" ant.

Finally, he said, "Tomorrow we will take it and put it in the sunlight, and it will come back to life." I calmly (read: madly trying not to laugh) explained to him that sunlight does not make things come back to life. "But J.T. said it does!" I told him I was older and wiser than his brother and again insisted sunlight will not make the little ant crawl around and do anty things again.

I said, "If you want to, we can do an experiment and put the ant in the sun tomorrow. We will see if it comes back to life." By that time he was defeated. He smeared the ant on his pajamas and flung himself in bed.

Sweet dreams, little repentant bug killer.

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