26 May 2010

ants and spiders and ticks.. i won't even say "oh my"

What do you think of bugs and things in nature that crawl and bite and sting? Do you scream, run away, or just leave them alone? Do you squash them without a second thought?
Today I went with my mom's 4th grade class to Turtle River State Park just outside Grand Forks. It was sunny, 70 degrees F, and everyone was in a good mood until... the less traveled trail.
We were geocaching, and one of the chaperone's GPSs led us along that trail. A student spotted a huge ant hill (although it was nothing compared to the ones I've seen in the jungle in Ecuador). Before we knew it, there were ants all over the place. It was as if a terrorist attack had commenced - we being terrorists, the ants the victims - and they called in the National Guard to fight back.

Well, that's quite an exaggeration. An ant bit one girl, other girls thought ants were invading their pants, and my incompetent-for-hiking-mules were an invitation for them to crawl and bite my feet. An incredible day for the 4th graders had turned into, "Waah, I wanna go home!" Fortunately they all settled down after leaving that trail.

But later this evening at home, the parents and I were cleaning up the garage when my sister bursted through the door and said, "Daaad, there's a spider in my shower and it's alive!! Come kill iiit!" followed by sobs.

Okay, I'm not a fan of spiders or creepy creatures like that, but is it worth it to cry and fret when we are thousands of times bigger than these bugs? They may be gross, we may be scared of them, but what good does it do when we could either get rid of them or just stay away? What do you think?

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