Lady Bugs

Have I got something to show you!

I came up to the Citadel Johnson's at 6:30 am to watch how everyone packs their lunches and gets off to school in the morning.

My most pleasant surprise was to have Meighan share with me her new hobby: collecting lady bugs.

She has a bucket of them and I was pleased to get my camera out to take a picture.

five lady bugs in a bucket ... well  at the very least, five in one corner

Why do you have so much garbage in there", one of her siblings asked.

"That is not garbage. Those are things they like. A bottle cap, a smooth field stone, a few feathers, a dried up-peach stone, some grass," she replied.

Later when their friends came to pick them up to walk them to school, I heard her say to one of them, "My mother doesn't let me take the lid off of my lady bugs, but my grandmother does."

Whoops. Is taking the lid off of the lady bug bucket off limits.

I had no idea how important the bucket really is. She took it off to school yesterday morning. It came home with her at night.

This morning, even though we were running late, leaving for a 15 minute walk to school with only 10 minutes to do it in, she grabbed that bucket and ran off ahead of me.

I am fast, but I couldn't keep up with her little legs, running ahead of me, gaily swinging the bucket and looking back over her shoulder to see how far behind I was.

The first bell had rung, but when she got there, her friends gathered around her, all of them checking to see how the lady bugs were doing today.

"Don't you know that the teachers hate to have children bringing bugs to school," Wyona asked me when I told her about transporting lady bugs to school.

Well, Wyona is the last person I would suspect who could would bawl me out about a child taking bugs, salamanders or frogs to school.