Little Pink Ant and COVID 19
As you know, the imagination of Anastasia created the Little Pink Ant, a very special ant that understands what people say. She lives in the locket that Anastasia always wears, and when Anastasia and her father (a famous gardener) visit new gardens the Little Pink Ant gets to meet the creatures in these gardens.
The Little Pink Ant arrived in a new garden (with Anastasia and her father) in 2020. The creatures in the garden did not understand why people were walking around with masks on their faces, so the Little Pink Ant explained that there was a new virus floating in the air around the world and that many people were afraid to breathe in this virus because they might die.
The Butterflies with their short-life spans were very health conscious (almost like doctors) and very alarmed. They told the Ladybirds (the nice caring creatures) that they should try not to breathe because they might die. But try as they might, most of the Butterflies and Ladybirds could not completely stop breathing. However, two Ladybirds were so frightened that they did stop breathing enough that they fainted and then fell to the ground.
“It’s the virus”, cried a Butterfly. “It’s killed two Ladybirds.” Most of the Butterflies then flew to the pond where the Frogs lived. “You must save the garden creatures”, they begged the Frogs. “Only you Frogs are big and powerful enough to make sure that all the creatures stop breathing.”
Frogs are not the most intelligent creatures in the garden, but most of them could see that creatures needed to breathe. However, they liked the idea of being in charge. So a compromise was reached. The creatures in the garden could breathe during the night, but would not be allowed to breathe when the sun was up.
It was nearly sunset when this new rule was introduced in the garden. Most creatures wanted to do the right thing and protect everyone from the virus. Knowing that they could not breathe when the sun came up, a small group of Bees spent all night breathing as much as they could. This hyper-ventilation made them feel sick and unable to fly straight when the sun came up. “Ah?”, cried the Butterflies, “The virus has attacked the Bees”.
All the garden creatures were now afraid. The Bees now said they would sting any creature that breathed that day. It was quite easy to get most of the creatures to fall in line. The Snails were slow (mentally and physically) and the Worms preferred to live in the dark and not see that there was no great threat. The result was that all creatures stayed still while holding their breathes.
The Black Ants were a potential problem because there were so many of them and they liked to be busy. Sitting in one place was not easy for them. To bribe the Black Ants to co-operate the Frogs promised to steal candy bars and “freddo frog” chocolate for them from the “people house”.
The crafty Spiders could also see what was happening and looked for a ways to take advantage of the situation. They said that they could catch the virus by extending their surveillance webs when they really just wanted to catch more spying flies.
Only the grasshoppers, who found it very difficult to stay still, continued to hop around and breathe. The Little Pink Ant was horrified that the creatures were acting in this way, but did find it funny to watch the non-breathing Bees chase the breathing Grasshoppers around trying to sting them.
The Little Pink Ant tried to tell the garden creatures that it was safe to breathe. After all, many people were still breathing! She then demonstrated that she was also breathing. Suddenly, there was a shriek! One of the Ladybirds said: “Little Pink Ant is breathing the virus on us. She brought it to our garden to kill us all.”
“Yes”, said one of the Black Ants, “she is pink. She is not a real ant! We should kill her.” “Yes”, added another ant. “Only black ant lives matter!” The Little Pink Ant looked around. All the creatures seemed to be in agreement. She was now very afraid. One of the Frogs moved forward to grab her.
But she should not have worried. Mapuf arrived!
As you know, Mapuf is a Magic Umbrella Propeller Flower with massive teeth. He is a flower whose umbrella-like petals can turn into a propeller. He was created by the imagination of the Little Pink Ant to protect her when she is threatened. In the same way that the very powerful imagination of Anastasia made the Little Pink Ant real, the very powerful imagination of the Little Pink Ant sometimes made Mapuf real.
The Frog that had tried to grab the Little Pink Ant was now gobbled-up by Mapuf.
All the other creatures gasped when they say this. This meant they breathed in air!
“I breathed air”, cried one of the Ladybirds. “I am going to die!” “Me too”, added a Bee.
There were sobs and then then silence as everyone waited to die. But, wait as they did, nobody died!
Finally one of the Butterflies said in surprise: “We are all alive! I think that we panicked. We wanted to save lives in the garden, but this led us to want to kill the Little Pink Ant. Now I want to breathe again!” And, so she did!
When the Little Pink Ant left the garden later in the day in the locket of Anastasia, the garden had returned to normal. But, not so the human world!