Written & Illustrated by: Laurie Trotman
Have you ever thought about things around you and yet you didn’t know where to go to get your questions answered? My name is Timmy, actually, it is Timmy Anthrox, but everyone just calls me Timmy. I’m an ant that lives in a colony of a thousand sisters and brothers, as well as almost five thousand uncles and aunts! We all live under the current queen, who happens to be my mother, Queen Sally! Isn’t she beautiful?
Our colony lives underground and we build tunnels day and night. New tunnels are built so that all of my aunts can go outside to collect food to feed us. A lot of my uncles are called ‘drones’ and they relate closely to Queen Sally. I’m told that this is why I have so many brothers and sisters, but I don’t know what that means exactly. Our colony is always growing.
My sisters get to go outside with my aunts and I usually have to stay inside and work in the tunnels moving sand.
This makes me sad because I am very curious about what is outside of the anthill. I’ve only been outside twice in my life. Once, when my Uncle Jack took me to a ‘picnic,’ and once last week when I met Tom the snail. These two adventures made me even more curious. Thankfully, my mother, Queen Sally, arranged for me to go to school so that I could learn.
Today was my first day of school. Aunt Pickles, who’s my favorite aunt, fixed me a lunch of strawberry sap and fly eggs. The other ants got to eat only leaves.
Auntie Bluebell was another of my favorite aunts. She made me a backpack made out of tree roots and also found me a red hat! I felt like I was the luckiest ant in the world and was ready to learn as much as possible. I ran as fast as I could out of the tunnel and up the anthill. I saw a few of my cousins were already there waiting for our ride.
What do we ride, you may ask? Well, we ride on beetles. Many beetles are usually coming by our anthills in the mornings so we hitch a ride with them until we get close to our school.
My school beetle’s name is Mr. Beetlelegs. I climbed up on him and we were off to school. Our school is inside a hole in a big oak tree that is near to our colony anthill.
I know that it is an oak tree because I learned that on my first day of school. I also learned that the brown stuff that we walked on to get to our classroom was called ‘bark.’ This confused me because we also learned about a creature called a dog that makes a sound called ‘bark!’
My teacher’s name was Mr. Eaglebud, and he was very smart. By the end of my first day of school, my head was spinning with all sorts of new information. It was exciting and made me even more curious to learn more, but Queen Sally told me that I had to take my time, study, and also help around the colony.
So after I did my homework, I did my chores and helped clean the tunnels. We ate dinner and then I went to bed. I slept very well that night, but I awoke early the next day, ready to go back to school to learn some more.
