Ladybug Garden Surprise

Henry wanted to count every ladybug in Grandma's garden, and there were so many that he kept losing his place.

He stood by the bean patch with a stubby pencil and a paper. "One, two, three," he said. "Four, five, six."

Then a ladybug flew past his nose. Was that a new one, or the same one again? Henry did not know.

"Oh, bother," he said. "I lost my place."

He tried again. "One, two, three, four." A ladybug landed on his pencil. Another landed on his ear. Another tickled his knee. Henry giggled, and he lost his place once more.

"Hold still, you wiggly dots!" he said.

But the ladybugs did not hold still. They had their own busy work to do. They were munching the tiny green bugs on the rose leaves, and they had no time for counting.

Henry sat down on an upside-down bucket and thought. Dots were hard to count when they moved. What if they could not move?

He looked at the paper. He looked at the garden. Then he saw it. The ladybugs kept going back to the same place, the fat pink roses.

"Aha," said Henry.

He crept to the roses. He did not count the ladybugs in the air. He counted the ones on one leaf. "One, two, three." Then the next leaf. "Four, five." Then the next.

A ladybug opened her red wings. Pfft! Off she went. Henry kept going, one leaf at a time.

"Seven, eight, nine, ten," he whispered. He wrote each number down, and his pencil moved slowly along.

At the very last leaf, one ladybug sat all alone, with only a single spot.

"Eleven," said Henry. "And you are the smallest."

He held out his paper. The little ladybug walked onto it, right across the number eleven, and stopped.

Henry sat very still. The sun was warm. The roses smelled sweet, and the bees hummed on and on.