The Terrible Stinking Stink Bug

by Shinan N. Barclay
P. O. Box 1300
Sedona, Az. 86339

Little Stinker was no ordinary stink bug. She came from a long line of the Terrible Stinking Stink Bug Family and was the worst stinker of all. No one wanted to play with her. No one even wanted to be around her.

"I feel sad," Little Stinker said to her mother. "I smell awful. I hate being a stink bug."

"Once a stink bug, always a stink bug," her mother said.

"Stink bug, ink bug! I wish I were a pink bug," Little Stinker said to herself. She crawled under some grass clippings. "Mmmm, this is a smell I like. I wish we could live in a grass pile."

"Little Stinker!" Her father yelled from the top of the trash pile. "Stop wishing and get moving. The exterminators are coming. We have to move."

"Oh," said Little Stinker. "Here we go again."

Every time the exterminators came with their bug sprays, the Terrible Stinking Stink Bug family had to move out of the local trash pile.

Off they went. Down the road and around a corner to find a new trash pile.

"I like traveling," Little Stinker said to her mother. "I like seeing new things and smelling new places. But trash piles are all the same. Same old garbage. Same old smells. What if we moved to a grass pile or a wood pile?"

"Don't get any fancy ideas. Once a stink bug, always a stink bug," her mother said. "The trash pile was good enough for your great grandma Phew. So it's good enough for you."

At last the Terrible Stinking Stink Bug family found its way to a new trash pile.

Suddenly, Little Stinker had a wonderful idea. "I know that I can find my own trash pile to pick through. But instead of a trash pile, maybe I could find a pile of rotton wood live in," she said half-aloud.

"And maybe, just maybe, I'll find a place where I can be an ink bug or a pink bug instead of a stinking, stink bug."

So Little Stinker crawled away by herself. She took a different path.

Little Stinker glanced back at her mother and father and the long line of Terrible Stinking Stink bugs. "I'll probably miss them," she said. "But there must be more to life than picking through trash piles and running from exterminators."

Little Stinker crawled far away. She saw things she had never seen before. She saw clear blue skies with puffy white clouds floating by.

"Stink bug, ink bug, I'm going to be a pink bug," she sang to herself.

Little Stinker felt things she'd never felt before. She felt soft green grass under her feet. The soft green grass felt so clean and tasted so sweet, Little Stinker said to herself, "No more trash for me."

In a lovely garden she discovered that fresh flowers have delicious smells. "The smell of old dead flowers on the trash pile made me sick," Little Stinker said to herself. "Yet when I smell fresh flowers I feel happy."

But the most exciting smell of all came from a small dark opening near the edge of a patio.

"It looks like a round brown rock," said Little Stinker. She crawled closer and tapped it with her feelers. "It feels like a soft mushroom."

She crawled near the dark hole and sniffed a wonderful smell. Coconut! She crawled into the tiny dark cave and found a pool of coconut lotion. She plopped into the hole and went swimming in the coconut lotion.

"This feels and smells like fresh rain, flowers and grass combined," she said. "I like it."

Then she found a soft, sweet-smelling powder. "This isn't dirt," she said tapping it with her feelers. "This isn't sand. What could it be?

If I could read these letters, P - O - W - D - E - R, I'd know."

"It feels good. It smells good. And it's right here next to the coconut pool." She put her front feet into the powder. "My feet are pink! My feet are pink!" she exclaimed.

Little Stinker rolled over and around in the pink powder. She no longer looked like a stink bug. She no longer smelled like a stink bug. "Stink bug, ink bug, I've become a pink bug," she said looking at herself in a mirror.

Just then someone gently picked her up. "What's this in the bottom of my purse? Why, it looks like one of Great-grandma's special scarabs."

The kind lady gently placed Little Stinker on her shawl. Perched there on the lady's shoulder, Little Stinker now sees new sights, and meets new people. Little Stinker and the storyteller travel around the world telling stories like this one.

And everyone says to the storyteller, "That's the most beautiful pink scarab in the world."

The End

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