Insect Tales

It was a cloudy night and the air was very still. Latimer Beetle could feel trouble in the air. ‘I don’t like nights like this,’ he thought to himself. ‘You never know what may happen.’ Latimer was riding herd over about two hundred head of lady bugs. Hiram Potato Bug had hired him to take the lady bugs down to the lower pasture. He had a contract with Tobias Caterpillar to supply him with lady bugs to pull his freight wagons.
Tobias had a good business supplying the other bugs with dried aphids for their winter stores. You can’t hibernate all winter without a good stockpile of dried aphids on hand. It took a team of eight lady bugs to pull the heavy wagons across the green expanse to fill the orders. Tobias made a good living doing this and also helped out a lot of his family members by giving them a job.
The herd was on edge and reacted as one to any unexpected noise. So, it was no wonder that when the lightning lit up the sky and the loud clap of thunder followed, the herd was immediately on the run. Latimer first heard the thunder from above and then the thunder of all the feet of two hundred bugs coming directly towards him.
In the ensuing chaos Latimer lost all control of his bodily functions as he scrambled out of the way of the stampede. All his ramrod experience went out the window and he could only watch as the entire herd, that was under his care, quickly disappeared into the darkness. ‘Oh, great.’ thought Latimer, ‘This is all I need. I’m in trouble now!’
He started running after the herd. He had no problem tracking them because everything in their path had been trampled down. After awhile he tired and slowed to a walk. He could see it would be impossible for him to catch up to the herd, so he decided to just stay put for the night and rest. He would certainly hear it from Hiram in the morning when he had to explain what happened.
He hadn’t been there for more than five minutes when he again heard thunder. ‘That’s funny,’ he thought. ‘ I didn’t see any lightning.’ He soon saw the reason for that! The herd had circled around and was heading straight back towards him. “YIKES!!!” He exclaimed to no one in particular. Latimer apparently had forgotten how tired he was because he started racing back up the trail with two hundred ladybugs hot on his heels.
It got to the point that he could run no further and he slowed. Thankfully, the herd did the same and came to a standstill just before reaching Latimer. He panted as he looked over the milling animals. ‘Well, I think I handled that pretty good’ he thought to himself.