A CLOSE CALL FOR BILLY

Little Billy Cricket peered out of the nest to see if anyone was nearby. You had to be careful when leaving the nest because of all the danger lurking in the Green Expanse. When he had lived at home he would usually grab one of his younger brothers and throw him out just to make sure it was safe before venturing past the doorway. Of course, he wouldn’t do such a thing now since he was much more mature.
Now that it was getting to be summer, that Fenimore kid had been sighted more often in the area and everyone was on the lookout. It looked okay, so he decided to take a chance and scurry over to a nearby pile of twigs. Once there, he felt safe to move around since he could see better in all directions and would have ample warning of any danger.
The sun had been up over the trees for awhile….long enough to warm things up and dry the dew off the plants. Little Billy walked under the bush where Rafael Spider lived and looked up to see him hard at work on his web. He had the neatest web on the bush, and with good reason since he was a hard working spider. He was also quite organized with his store of aphids neatly piled up in one corner of his web. They were the appetizers…..the main courses were individually wrapped in another corner.
‘That web sure is more tidy than Latimers and my nest’ thought Billy. You could barely find anything in their mess and they had only been living there for a couple of weeks. He was embarrassed to have any friends over for a visit. Little Billy made a mental note to discuss it with Latimer when he got home.
Out of the corner of his eye, Little Billy saw a movement and he caught his breath. ’Oh, thank goodness! It’s only Franklin Centipede out for a walk.’ Relieved, Billy decided to follow Franklin for awhile and see where he was headed. After all, what else did he have to do today? Other than looking for food, he didn’t really have much to do although he was quite socially active.
It was very fascinating to watch Franklin walk with all his legs going in a continuous wave of motion. Now, that is true grace and such a thrill to see….Billy was impressed.
All of a sudden Franklin stubbed one of his feet on a small tuft of grass barely visible through the dirt. This set up a chain reaction of legs going totally out of sync with each other and Franklin almost veering off into a large stick, which would most certainly have scraped him badly. Embarrassed, Franklin quickly looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his clumsiness. He didn’t notice Billy, who had ducked behind a fern to spare Franklin his ego. ‘After all, we insects have a reputation of graceful movement derived from eons of evolution to live up to.’ thought a wise beyond his years Billy.
As Franklin regained his dignity and moved on down the trail, Little Billy started off on another tangent and on to new adventures. And as luck would have it, he shortly came across a strange and wondrous object looming up in front of him. Wide eyed, he studied it from top to bottom and from side to side. It had very smooth sides and appeared to be a large box made up of multicolored rectangles. It had a number of openings in it, with one large opening at the base of one side that Billy easily walked through.
‘It smells very good in here,’ thought Billy. ‘Like the wild strawberries I ran across one day.’ There were a number of spots that were very sticky and covered parts of the rectangles. Billy was soon licking the side of a green rectangle and was enjoying the good tasting treat. ‘Now this would be the perfect place to live. Nice and clean and if you get hungry you can just lick the walls!’
All at once the green rectangle, and in fact the whole structure, was suddenly lifted into the air leaving Little Billy in mid lick. “What the heck??” Billys’ eyes followed the object disappearing into the sky and as it grew smaller he could see the reason why it had decided to defy the laws of gravity. It was the Fenimore kid and Little Billy was on the verge of becoming his next victim.
Little Billy did two things simultaneously……..one he hadn’t done since he was a baby and not toilet trained….and the other was to do a quick one eighty and start racing towards the safety of home.
“Hey! There are those Legos I was missing.” Little Bobby examined the block building and noticed the sticky spots on the sides. “That must be from that jam sandwich I was eating the day I put this together. It’s a wonder the bugs didn’t find it.”