She lived quietly in the deep, green grass, spending her day with her friends and reading books from her large library deep in her den. She sometimes took long walks and enjoyed her long chats with the other creatures like the bumble bees as they gathered food for their hives. The butterflies would sing her rock-n-roll tunes they'd heard during their journeys and the grasshoppers sometimes gave her rides across the meadow on their backs. In short, she had it all in the deep green grass. Even the sunflowers swayed in greetings as she passed by.
One sunny summer day she met a creature that looked like herself, but somehow different. He was busy and didn't want to talk with her or sing her songs, but she was happy and didn't really care much about this busy unfriendly creature. It troubled her, though, that he resembled her so much but seemed to be so different in his way of life. She had just decided that she wouldn't have anything more to do with this creature when he suddenly noticed her.
He stopped working on whatever he'd busied himself with and took a good long look at her. She could tell he recognized they were similar creatures. He apparently became curious and moved towards her, his head tilted to one side in a questioning way and asked in a very high pitched squeaky voice: "What in the world are YOU?"
Well, she didn't know. She and her friends hadn't ever discussed whether they had a name or not. They called each other by names they'd thought up or taken from other things they knew the name of. Her best friend lived in the deep brown cat tails, so they called her "Cat Tail" and her nearest neighbor was called "Grump" because he always had to say something bad about everything. "Red" had a reddish tint to her body and "Boot'' had found an old boot once that she'd dragged around to everyone to show and had finally left behind after pulling a muscle trying to drag it all the way to the farmer's gate.
This creature did not understand why she didn't have a proper name like bee or butterfly or grasshopper. He said, "everyone knows what they are!" "Well, what are you, then? " she asked.
"I am an army ant", he said very proudly. We work all day--and nights too, making our hill strong against invasion."
"Invasion? What's that?" said she. He gave her a long look and must have decided she was to silly to talk to anymore, because he abruptly turned on his heels and took off to work on his hill. She was stunned by such unfriendly and rude behavior but at the same time curious about this lookalike creature. On her way home she was surprised to encounter more of them, all busy carrying little branches in their backpacks and all following each other in a single file with severe faces looking straight down the path. Just the eyeballs were curiously turned in her direction, but none of the creatures broke their even strides. Even from a distance she could hear the deep rumbling sound of their footsteps and--there seemed to be millions of them! She started to wonder what the mysterious creature was doing off on his own instead of marching with his kind through the deep deep grass...
Will the secret be lifted?
Will THEY meet again?
Will they exchange names?
Will she know what's she's called?
All these questions and more will be answered in the next installment of our big serial novel...Look for it in our 2nd Special Edition: the Silver Anniversary High Times!