bugs! Hooray!

Ro and I flipped over all the rocks in the garden yesterday to see what lived underneath them. It was primarily ants and rolly-pollies (pill bugs) with the occasional brown spider or millipede. Ro was thrilled. He initially wanted to pull up all the rocks to build something with them but once he saw the rolly-pollies, he was hooked on looking for bugs. I like bugs so I had a good time. One rock was the roof for a rather complicated ant nest. Ro was thrilled to see lots of tunnels and many panicky ants trying to hide their eggs. He put that rock back first though, so the "ants can have their roof back."

He's gotten a little protective of bugs in some ways. He won't let us kill any flies in the house because they're his "friends". It's ok to swat a wasp or step on an ant though. I've convinced him that carpenter ants are bad so he steps on them now. On the other hand, Sim just loves ants. She's constantly picking up the big carpenter ants and trying to give them to me. I guess they don't bite because she's done it about 20 times now. She's not very happy when I step on them. So, I have to wait to she turns around before I crunch them. Although, I needn't bother most of the time as most ants don't survive Simone's attempts at friendliness.