the theme of this summer's reading club was bugs. i got into the spirit by buying an ant farm for the library.

unfortunately, it was too cold in the library (or at least that's my theory) because the ants mostly dug themselves a little burrow-type place and spent most of their time in there huddled together.

then a few of them died. and the rest spent all their time avoiding the tunnels where the dead ants were curled up.

last week, one of the live ants was at the top of the tunnel looking down. another ant had a dead ant by the torso and was trying to drag him up and out of the tunnel. i know i was anthropomorphizing (a hazard of reading too many children's books), but i just kept seeing an army guy dragging his dead buddy out of the war zone. soooooo melodramatic of me.

but i couldn't shake the thought, so i took the ants and dumped them outside. they instantly started running around and displaying more energy than they had for the four weeks i had them in the library. they don't have a queen. they will probably not last. i may even have started an ant plague in my neighborhood.

i did it anyway. you would have done the same.