Finding books about ants turned out to be not nearly as hard as I thought it would be.My mother had been reading us stories at bedtime for as long as I could remember,but she had been reading from the same books over and over.Really,there were very few books in our room.I'd never been to a bookstore either,so when I asked for books about ants,I really had no idea where books even came from.But I was about to find out'
One afternoon,before we went to pick up my mother from work,m,y father,sister and I all piled into the car early,right after the afternoon movie.I guess maybe my father had a couple of routine errands to run,but where we eventually ended up was at a supermarket called Mountain Way,just a few blocks from our house.But we didn't come to pick up groceries.Instead,we stopped by this old bus,or at least that's what it looked like.It was a kind of blue and gray color,and it was taking up a lot of space in the parking lot.But it wasn't a bus exactly.There might have been a time when it had been a bus, but what it was was a bookmobile, or a portable library.The public library was downtown,but as of that time,I'd never been there.But the library operated at least one of these bookmobiles that would run all over the place with books.The Library in Moncton at the time actually serviced three of New Brunswick's counties:Albert,Kent and Westmoreland. So it would have been a very long way for some people to be able to get to the downtown library.Therefor,they had at least one bookmobile that used to visit far off places on a regular schedule.
We went into the bookmobile.Right in the front,in fact probably right from the actual driver's seat,there was a desk where the librarian worked.She made out these little, blue paper cards with our names on them so we could borrow books.Then we were off to look for books about ants.Apart from the seat/desk,and a very narrow walkway,the rest of the bookmobile was stuffed to the ceiling with all sorts of books.It had a children's section,and we did find a book about ants.We found a book about snakes as well.I'd never seen a snake that I could remember, except on some television show,but what I knew about them was that some could bite with a poisonous bite that could kill a person, and some were very large and could wrap up around a person until they were dead.I also knew the story of Adam and Eve,and that the snake in that story was a seriously bad dude,though I wasn't exactly sure what he did.It turned out there were harmless snakes as well,but I guess they just didn't make for very good television,so I never heard of them.I was somewhat afraid of snakes on the one hand,but,on the other hand I didn't think there were any around where we lived,so I never worried about them much.In any event,one of the first books I ever remember taking out of the library was a book with a lot of pictures of snakes, to go along with a picture book on ants.
So we learned a lot about snakes and ants from those first library books.I found out that poisonous snakes had eyes like cats,with horizontal slits, while harmless snakes had more doglike eyes,with round pupils.And of course,if a snake carried poison,he had a set of very sharp teeth inside his mouth from which the poison came.I thought if I ever actually saw a snake,I might look into his eyes to see what kind of snake he was.But I was really darn sure that looking into a snakes mouth for teeth was a bad idea, and I swore never to do it.It was a while longer before I actually saw snakes though. I learned about ants too,more than I could ever hope to learn just sitting in the anthill.I learned that they burrowed beneath the ground,through miles and miles of tunnels that were kind of like the hallways in our house.I learned that they would eat sugar,so I put some out for them and watched them carry it away.The book also told me that some ants lived in trees,and that there was a kind that could even cross streams by building a bridge out of, well,ants.They would stretch out over a body of water and form a line,and more ants would crawl over top of them until they all reached the other side. According to the book,there was also a kind of ant called fire ants,because a lot of them could start crawling on a person and biting,and it was said to feel just like being burned.Fire was something I was very aware of,and I didn't thing the idea of using the word "fire" and "ant" in the same sentence was a very good one.It had the potential to ruin a lot of my fun at the time.The burning question in my mind was,could those red ants out back be fire ants? I didn't think so,because I'd been playing there for some time,and I'd never been so much as bitten.Not even once. According to the book there were ant-like things called termites too.These thing kind of worried me,because they could eat your house.Well,I think the book meant kind of gradually,but try telling that to a five year old.I wondered if these ants could possibly be termites, but again, I didn't think so.I'd surely carried enough inside with me at lunch time and at the end of the day,and our house still seemed to be just fine.But you could just never be certain.My mother really didn't seem to like the ants, and she really didn't want them in the house,so I thought maybe she was wondering about termites too.
Those first few books we brought home from the bookmobile told me a lot of things I wanted to know.But they told me some things that I could maybe have done without knowing too.Things that caused me some anxiety.Like the whole thing about fire ants. But such was the nature of reading,I was to find.No matter what I've read though,reading and books have been a wonderful part of life that all started with that first trip to the bookmobile, and a couple opf picture books about ants and snakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment