Written & Illustrated by: Laurie Trotman

My name is Timmy.

I am an ant that loves to go on adventures.

Today is a school day, but we aren’t going to school.

We are going on a field trip!

Queen Sally met us this morning and wished us a VERY fun day!

“Gosh, where are we going?” I wondered. Franklin, my big brother, heard me and said, “I don’t know, but I heard Uncle Billy say that he was super excited for us!”

We were all ready to go, so we marched out of the anthill.

We saw a whole line of school beetles waiting for us. I have never seen so many of them all in one place!

All the beetles had names. There was Mr. Beetleman, Mrs. Saltybeetle, Mrs. Beetletoes, and Mr. Beetlelegs.

My teacher, Mr. Eaglebud, had a large horn. He talked into it, told us to stay in line, and start climbing onto the school beetles.

When it was my turn, I climbed up onto Mrs. Beetletoes.

Then, Mr. Eaglebud made another loud announcement!

“Today we are going to a water park to go swimming, and also to ride on water rides!” We all started clapping and cheering!

The school beetles started moving and soon we made it to the water park.

Franklin, my big brother, said that I should go with him so that he could show me all of the rides.

We went to the ‘Cattail Slide’ first.

Franklin started climbing and told me to follow him.

We climbed and climbed.

Then, Franklin hopped off the cattail onto a green leaf! The leaf bent over and he went sliding down and then…KERSPLASH…into the pond below.

He hollered up to me, “Your turn Timmy! JUMP!”

I leaped onto the leaf, and…SWOOSH…I started sliding so fast that I could hear myself giggling, and then, I was up in the air…and…KERSPLASH!!!

I had barely come up out of the water when I heard Franklin yelling, “Come on! I want to show you the Lily-pad Water Slide!”

We ran over to the stream and hopped onto a passing lily-pad. Franklin yelled, “Hang on because this starts moving very fast!”

Water was splashing and we started spinning on the lily-pads.

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!” I laughed.

We rode on hopping frogs, that leaped from lily-pad to lily-pad before landing in water;

Dragonflies took us up in the air, then we jumped onto lilies and then into the pond below;

Then, at the end of the day, we floated and relaxed on lily-pads that had pink and red lilies on them.

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

We didn’t want the day to end, but we heard Mr. Eaglebud’s loud horn again as he said, “Time to go home!”

We all crawled slowly back to the school beetles. We were very tired, but we all thought that we were the luckiest ants in all the world!