Ants

Owen, the same child who shrieks in terror if a butterfly flies within 5 feet of him, is now obsessed with ants. We routinely have big black carpenter ants scouting around our house in the summer (they don't like the poison, surprise!). Today I saw him skittering all over the kitchen and could not figure out what he was up to until he ran up to me with an ant trapped between thumb and forefinger. I masked my revulsion and said, 'Wow!' Owen said, 'Mommy, I catched this ant! He was running all around and I chased him and catched him! He likes me. I love him and he loves me and this ant is my friend! Mommy, what is his name? My friend is being very, very, still Mommy. He's not wiggling at all.' Oh dear, I was sure he had squished the ant thoroughly and I was wondering how he was going to react to figuring that out. But the ant perked up and escaped and Owen was just devastated that his friend had gone away. I finally convinced him that ants are very busy with jobs they need to do, and also maybe he needed to go home to take a nap. When Owen woke from his own nap today his first question was, 'Where is my ant? Is he waking up from his nap too? Let's go find him!' We were out of luck for a while, but eventually he spied another one and said, 'There's my friend! He's awake! Let's go get him!' and managed to grab him. I don't know how he does it...takes some fine motor skills! A few minutes later he came up and said that he put his ant down because the ant bit his thumb. Silly me kept trying to convince him that ants don't bite. No really, Owen, they can't bite! Well, there it was, a welt on his thumb and I was proved an idiot. He was completely unperturbed by it, though. I don't think it must have hurt too much. But we've decided that maybe picking up ants isn't the best thing.