The Adventures of Butterbean and the King


It was the last day of school at Ant Arthur Academy before the summer break. Butterbean and the King didn’t want to spend all summer in ant training. Summer breaks were spent sharpening such ant skills as lifting and antennae training or food gathering—although Butterbean didn’t mind the gathering part much because he seemed to eat more than he gathered. In the end, though, the two thought that ant life was too short, and this was not how they wanted to spend their summer. So they decided that the next morning they would take off.

As you may know, ants can lift an item that’s twenty times its own weight, and they find their way back and forth from the mound by using their antennae to sniff the ground and also the air. You might say they touch and smell with them.

Ants use a system of roads or trails they have made to travel back and forth from the mound when it’s time for food gathering, which seems to be most of the time due to the fact that there are thousands of ants to feed in the colony. Ants lay down a specific scent when and where food is found so other ants in the same colony can find it.

The summer gathering was the busiest time for the colony. They must be prepared for the fall and winter season when food was hard to find. That’s why everyone in the colony chipped in with the workload—well, except Queen Vida and her babies—and this summer gathering, they would be missing two young ants. Our two guys decided they would spend this summer exploring outside the mound. As they would soon discover, this should not have been the thing to do.

Butterbean and the King hardly slept a wink the night before they left. Both were so excited about their journey. The two met early the next morning at the main mound entrance, which was slightly on the east side of the mound. The ant elders had chosen the east side because that was the side the sun rose on and would give them a few more minutes of daylight. Our guys knew this, so they planned to meet while the others were still eating breakfast.

Ants are extremely smart insects, so they never start the day without the most important meal of the day. Today was a breakfast feast for everyone since it was the beginning of the gathering.

Butterbean was by no means going to miss breakfast, especially since he and the King were also going to have a long day ahead. He had stuffed his backpack full of goodies the night before since he wasn’t sleeping much anyway.

Butterbean was rarely seen without his lime green backpack. His favorite answer most of the time when asked what was in the backpack was, “You never know when you might get hungry.” Then he would give a little chuckle and shrug his shoulders and continue about his business without another thought. He also had it packed with some rather strange items for an ant to be carrying around. He had a piece of string, a blue rock and a shiny gold BB (shot pellet 0.175) among other unknown items.

The BB he had was found once on a school field trip to the top of the mound. That trip was the closest either of the two ants had actually been to leaving the mound. The whole class got to stand on the top of the mound and look out at the world around them. Most of that day was spent outside in the fresh air looking at things that, before then, they had only seen in books.

That trip was what brought Butterbean and the King together as a team, a best buds team, you might say. That day, they both realized they had two things in common that nobody else in the colony could relate to. They both wanted to see what was out there beyond Queen Vida’s boundaries, and neither thought that anyone in the mound would even notice they were missing. Both ants felt that they just didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the ants in the colony.



The Adventures of Butterbean and the King, The Tale of the Crown Jewels


The Trinity of Evil consists of three very despicable characters. The first of which Butterbean and the King had a brief encounter with on the way to the Crown mound would be Socrates the sorcerer. He is a very old southwestern zebra scorpion. He is white with black zebra stripes that cover his entire body and run to the tip of his deadly tail. Although he has the ability to change the colors on his armored shell and segmented tail, he is always striped.

He has in his possession the eye-piercing blue sapphire jewel from King Zeke’s crown. This is his prized possession and he guards it with all his medieval magical powers. He stashes all his guarded worldly pieces deep in his den. He also has something that belonged to Butterbean, the gold BB he took as payment for allowing them to pass. He wasn’t extremely pleased when he realized he had been scammed; the BB wasn’t real gold. He instantly used his magical powers and turned that BB into a solid gold gazing ball he can use to view the past, present, and the future. The first thing he viewed in his new golden ball was the return of Butterbean and the King, and this time they were looking for him or something he has. He lives in a gloomy dungeon of a den located not far from where he

encountered the two ants at their fi rst meeting. His den is hard to find since it is located deep in a patch of hawkweed thistles near the creek. These thistles have branches that resemble talons on a hawk and hundreds of small thistle thorns that break off into the skin and body when disturbed. The second Trinity of Evil associate and menace to society is Spinner the black widow spider. She is a nasty, mean, and hateful ten-legged black spider with a bulging red hourglass-shaped design on her bottom side. L. Michael Hellums

Inserted into that hourglass shape is the precious red ruby jewel from the king’s crown. It is proudly displayed and deeply embedded into her body in the top tier of the hourglass. Of course, this allows her to be in possession of the stone at all times.

Spinner is ancient in age and many years ago had made several deadly attempts on King Zeke’s life. It’s still unsure if she had anything to do with his brutal death since there were no witnesses found alive to tell. Her fangs are extremely venomous and she can launch a cluster of her sticky webbing at great distances. This enables her to detain her prey until she can pull them in closer and inject her venomous bite into their crunchy bodies. Once bitten by the fatal bite, she encases them in her webbing and drinks up the victim’s last juices of life as their bodies turn to empty

cases of mush.

Her spider’s lair is located just beyond the mysterious Black Mustard Forest . Spinner has a pair of multiview eyes that enables her to see in all directions, but her sense of smell is not very good. This enables her to live so close to the foul-smelling Mustard Forest. The mustard plants are tall slender plants that have bright yellow fl owers and very pungent seeds. Once you’ve entered into the forest, these seeds produce a harsh aroma that overpowers your sense of taste and smell with a horrible burning sensation.