Little Lindy’s going to be three years old tomorrow, and a crowd of her little friends will get together to celebrate. Right now, Lindy’s crawling around the kitchen floor while her mom SueLynn happily mixes cake batter. Suddenly, though, SueLynn realizes that Lindy’s putting things in her mouth, one after another. What’s on the floor? What’s Lindy eating?

Oh, no! It’s ants! SueLynn flies into a panic, trying to get them out, but Lindy’s already swallowed them! She does everything she can think of, but Lindy’s not doing well! SueLynn makes a wild phone call to the Poison Control Center.

A young medical student, we’ll give him a temporary name of Doctor Kildare, is doing a rotation in toxicology at the center this weekend. He takes the call.

"You’ve got to help me," SueLynn sobs. "It’s my daughter, she’s dying, she swallowed some ants, I don’t know what to do."

The young intern attempts to calm down the crying woman. "And how old is your daughter?" he asks.

"She’s three," the woman answers. "Please, please send an ambulance right away before the ants kill her."

"Where is your daughter now?" asks young Doctor Kildare.

"She’s right here, with me in the kitchen," says the panic-stricken mother, still crying uncontrollably.

"How many ants did your daughter ingest?" asks the intern.

"I’m not sure. The ants were crawling on the floor near a grocery cabinet. She ate five or six ants, could have been more, I really don’t know," says the mom.

"Before you called me," asks the young intern, "did you treat your daughter in any way?"

"No. I didn’t know what to do," says the mom, "all I did was give her some ant poison to kill those nasty little beasts!"

"Bring your daughter to the hospital right away!" says young Doctor Kildare.

Note to readers: No insects were harmed during the writing of this column.