Rolie Polies

When my sister, Leslie, and I were little, we loved to find rolie polie bugs in our backyard. We had a yellow plastic rocking horse that we decided was the rolie polies' town. We would take the bugs, which had curled into balls, and put them in a little hole in the back of the rocking horse, trapping them inside forever. I thought we were doing them a favor by taking them to their "town" with all of the other rolie polies we had found. Now I realize that we were dooming them.


Well, we were at the park today, playing in the shade under the playground equipment, when Oliver noticed a similar hole on the underside of the orange plastic slide. Childhood curiosity drew him to it. There were no bugs around, so he started placing small pebbles into the hole instead. Every time a rock would slide down to the bottom of the inside of the slide, he would giggle. Mabel took his lead (like she usually does, even though she is more than 2 years his senior) and kept up this game long after Oliver had moved onto something else.


I couldn't help but remember our rolie polie town. Fortunately for the bugs of Mesa, they escaped an early demise with the sacrifice of pebbles instead.