(I know how we can solve our national crisis in educational funding: Whenever the schools needed money, they could send a letter to all the parents saying: “Give us a contribution right now, or we’re going to hold a Science Fair.” They’d raise billions.)

Our Science Fair project is due tomorrow, but the ant is still wet, so we’re using a hair dryer on it. Science Fair judges hate a wet ant. Another problem is that our ant is starting to sag, both in the front (or, in entomological terms, the “prognosis”) and in the rear (or “butt”). It doesn’t look like one of those alert, businesslike, “can-do” ants that you see striding briskly around. It looks depressed, like an ant that has just been informed that all 86,932 members of its immediate family were crushed while attempting to lift a Tootsie Roll.

While Robert is drying the ant, I get a flashlight and go outside to examine the experiment portion of our project, which is entitled “Ants and junk Food.” On our back fence we put up a banner that says, in eight-inch-high letters, WELCOME ANTS. Under this is a piece of cardboard with the following snack substances scientifically arranged on it: potato chips, a spicy beef stick, a doughnut, a Snickers candy bar, chocolate-filled cookies, Cheez Doodles, Cocoa Krispies, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers. If you were to eat this entire experiment, you would turn into a giant pimple and explode.

We figured this experiment would attract ants from as far away as Indonesia, and we’d note which junk foods they preferred, and this would prove our basic scientific point (“Look! I did a Science Fair project!”). Of course you veteran parents know what actually happened: The ants didn’t show up. Nature has a strict rule against cooperating with Science Fair projects. This is why, when you go to a Science Fair, you see 200 projects designed to show you how an electrical circuit works, and not one of them can actually make the little bulb light up. If you had a project that was supposed to demonstrate the law of gravity using heavy lead weights, they would fall up.