AN: This is absolutely true. TA Maxwell, please don't be mad. At the time, what happened really seemed like The End. I couldn't stop thinking of that story and what happened to me for that entire day. Here is what happened.

At Camp MacLean, everybody had to sit at a table and eat their food family style. The girls I liked. The guys had become more inconsiderate as the trip wore on. I hated it.

After we had finished eating, somebody had to take a sponge and wipe off the table. I was chosen to do it. I was wiping off all of the crumbs when someone said, "Maddie, you missed a crumb." I looked to where they were pointing, and I saw an injured ladybug trying to cross the table. I saw that it wasn't walking very good and that its wings weren't going anywhere. The girls gasped as they realized that it wasn't walking well because of the big puddle of water it was standing in. We put a napkin in front of it.

It started to walk onto the napkin, but then one of the boys grabbed the napkin and flicked the ladybug off of it. They started flicking the ladybug around the table while all of the girls protested. I finally called out, "Stop! You guys, stop! This is really cruel."

The guy who was across the table from me flashed me an evil smile and flicked the ladybug my way. It stopped just short of the edge of the table. There was no helping it. It was already dead.

I remember the anger that was welling up inside of me as I looked at the creature, its arms curled up inside of it as ladybugs' dead forms do, and I knew that nature had not killed it. An innocent creature had been killed by a bunch of kids, who had just the power to help it as they did to kill it.

I took the ladybug and put it in a napkin. There was nothing I could do, and no plot of dirt nearby, so I was forced to gently place it in the garbage can.

One of the boys said to me, "Whaddya want? A proper burial?" I glared at him and sat down.

This reminded me of TA Maxwell's story so much because at that moment, I felt the end of peace, hope, and the world before fighting. There was only one difference, as I have said: It was not nature who killed this poor creature, but Americans, out of the cruelty of their hearts, just for a few laughs. Well, I just hope that if they read this, they'll realize that what they did may not have been as horrible as the terrorists on September 11, but it was just as cruel.