Written & Illustrated by: Laurie Trotman

My name is Timmy. I am an ant that loves adventure more than anything else. Today is a school day, but our class is going on a special trip. Mr. Eaglebud, my teacher, told us yesterday to sleep well and bring lunch as it would be a long day. None of us knew where we were going, but we knew it was going to be exciting, and that was all that mattered.

Aunt Pickles and Auntie Bluebell worked hard last night, making us all backpacks and putting special lunches inside. Queen Sally met us all this morning and wished us a VERY enjoyable day!

“Gosh, where are we going?” I wondered aloud.

One of my older brothers, Franklin, heard me and said, “I don’t know, but I heard Uncle Billy say that he was super excited for us. He didn’t say anything else though to give me a clue!”

Once we were all ready to go, we marched out of the anthill and were surprised to see a whole line of school beetles waiting for us.

I’ve never seen so many of them all in one place.

Mr. Eaglebud had a large horn and he talked into it, told us to stay in line, and start getting onto the school beetles.

I saw Mr. Beetleman, Mrs. Saltybeetle, and even Mr. Beetlelegs (he was my regular school beetle), but I guess today I was going to ride on a new beetle.

When it was my turn, I climbed up onto Mrs. Beetletoes along with my cousin Sparky. After we were all on the school beetles, Mr. Eaglebud made another loud announcement! “Today we are going to a water park for a fun-filled day of swimming and rides!”

All of my older cousins started cheering because they had been to a water park before. Most of us had never been before so we didn’t know just how much fun it was going to be. We started cheering anyway because the excitement was contagious.

All the school beetles started moving and before long we made it to the…

FROG HAVEN WATER PARK

We were all so excited that we jumped off of the school beetles like lightning. Mr. Eaglebud laughed saying that we almost looked like lightning bugs!

Franklin said that I should follow him so that he could show me all of the amazing rides and fun. We went first to the ‘Cattail Slide.’ Franklin started climbing and said, “Follow me!” We climbed up a long stem and then around this brown thing at the top. Franklin explained that was the cattail.

I watched as Franklin hopped off the cattail onto a green leaf! When he landed, the leaf bent over and he went sliding down and then…KERSPLASH…into the pond below!

He came up out of the water and hollered up to me, “Your turn Timmy! JUMP!”

Once the green leaf was close enough, I leaped and…SWOOSH…I started sliding so fast that I could hear myself squealing with laughter, and maybe a little fear too! Then, I was up in the air and…KERSPLASH!!! It was amazing! I swam back to the nearby land and looked back as Sparky was flying into the water.

Franklin wasted no time and was yelling, “Come on! I want to show you the ‘Lily-pad Water Slide!’ We ran over to the edge of a narrow stream and hopped onto a passing lily-pad. Franklin yelled back to us, “Hang on because this starts moving very fast!”

He wasn’t kidding, as the water was moving faster and was going over rocks all of the sudden. Water was splashing and we started spinning. Just as I thought it was going too fast, we splashed into the pond!

I came up out of the water laughing, “That was scary and fun!”

The rest of the day we rode on hopping frogs that leaped from lily-pad to lily-pad before splashing into the water.

There were dragonflies all over the place that took us up into the air.

Sometimes they would fly over ponds where there were lilies and we would jump into the pond below.

Then, finally, we spent the last part of the day floating and relaxing on lily-pads that had pink and red lilies on them.

They were calm and just floated gently.

I was lying on my back, looking at the clouds and thinking that this may have been the most fun I’ve ever had.

I don’t think any of us wanted the day to end, but then we heard Mr. Eaglebud’s loud horn as he said, “Time to go home!”

We all headed back to the school beetles, but we moved rather slowly. Our legs were almost too tired to climb onto the beetles. I think that I must have slept on the ride back home because I had more energy when we arrived back at the anthill!

I said goodbye, and thank you to Mrs. Beetletoes before running inside to share all of my adventures and fun with Queen Sally. Today, I felt like I was one of the luckiest ants in the whole world!