Lassie Season 6, Episode 20: The Grasshopper and the Ant

1

The New Refrigerator

Ruth loves her new refrigerator, but Lassie prefers meals from the old icebox instead--precipitating a battle of wills.

2

Old Henry

Timmy buys an old plowhorse for a dollar, but Paul says they cannot keep the animal since he can't do any work. In trying earn money to keep the horse, Timmy becomes trapped in a mine.

3

The Contest

Timmy enters a ""why I love my pet"" contest and entrusts Lassie to get the entry to the mailman on time, but she spends so much time aiding neighbors in trouble that the letter is not delivered.

4

The Mascot

Baseball great Roy Campanella comes to coach the Calverton Boys' League just as Timmy puts in a bid for Lassie to become the team's mascot. But when Timmy overhears two boys bargaining over who will pitch the first game and is threatened that Lassie will not get the mascot position if he tells, he's thrown in a quandary.

5

The Sulky Race

A down-on-his-luck horse racer who needs to win just one more race to start his own farm boards his two harness horses, Big Boy, his future stud horse, and Lazy Joe, Big Boy's stablemate, at the Martin farm. But at an early time-trial, Big Boy turns up lame.

6

Growing Pains

After Timmy gets a ""real shiner"" in a fight, Ruth can't understand the self-respect he's gained with his larger classmates and forbids him to play football with them.

7

The Flying Machine

As the smallest in the group, Timmy chosen to be test pilot for the gang's homemade glider. But the test flight will be held over a cliff.

8

The UNICEF Story

On a windy night, Lassie hears screaming coming from the woods, and upon investigating, finds a foreign girl named Anna wandering about lost. Befriending the girl, Lassie brings her home to the Martins. They discover she is a European girl that the Wilkins family has taken in temporarily. She is enrolled in the Calverton school and Timmy begins acclimating her to the area by taking her on a picnic. He notices she always eats as if she is starving; at first he does not notice that she is also hoarding food. Anna is continually coming in late, and then Miss Hazlit begins having complaints from Rudy that things are disappearing from the childrens' lunch boxes. When Rudy accuses Anna in front of the other kids, Timmy fights with him until Miss Hazlit breaks it up and makes Rudy apologize. Timmy comes home, however, and overhears Miss Hazlit telling Ruth that she also suspects that Anna is the thief. Timmy is disturbed, but agrees to let Miss Hazlit take care of the matter. In the meantime,

9

Water Boy

Paul needs a new well, and Cully Wilson swears he can find water with a divining rod rather than Paul hiring an expensive geologist.

10

The Whopper

Ruth is disturbed by the tall tales Timmy is telling to impress Willy Brewster--a problem compounded when he tells Willy and Flip that Mrs. Larson, a new neighbor living in a run-down house, is a witch.

11

The Bounty Hunter

Due to stock killings by a puma nicknamed ""Satan,"" the local farmers hire a bounty hunter, a curt, unlikable man whose tracking dog King and Lassie immediately strike sparks off one another.

12

The Land Grabber

After Paul refuses to consider selling his land to a real estate broker, someone ruins his tomato crop and sets fire to his hay.

13

The Man from Mars

When Timmy sees a meteorite come down, he's sure it was really a spaceship from another planet--and that a man from Mars is wandering around the farm. Funny thing is: food keeps disappearing from the Martin house!

14

In Case of Emergency

After a local farmer dies on the way to the Capitol City hospital, fifty miles away, the Martins spearhead a plan to start a community hospital, but a prominent farmer known as a skinflint refuses his approval.

15

Star Reporter

Timmy persuades editor Ira Caldwell to let him try and earn money by selling newspaper subscriptions to the Calverton Sentinel,and then accidently overhears a plan to rob the local dairy's co-op while at the Vance farm.

16

Alias Jack and Joe

During a game, the boys begin fighting and Flip is knocked out by a rock thrown by Rudy, who makes Timmy and Sam believe Flip is dead and it's their fault, so the two boys and Lassie run away to avoid disgracing their families.

17

Judas Goat

Phil Houston's stockyards suddenly gets a new source of lambs for market thanks to his assistant Joe Morton and Lassie seems to be reacting to strange noises not coming from the new silent dog whistle Timmy recently purchased.

18

The Space Traveler

When Timmy and Don accidentally release the guinea pig from an experimental rocket, they replace it with Timmy's guinea pig Alexander the Great. But authorities suspect the guinea pig on the rocket was exposed to deadly radiation.

19

The Maverick

large mongrel dog who's been a nuisance on neighbors' farms is trapped in a gorge, and although most of the farmers want the stray dead, the Calverton dog pound representative wants to save him.

20

The Grasshopper and the Ant

Timmy, studying grasshoppers for a school project, becomes so worried about a possible plague when he sees a big nest of the insects that he speaks up at the Grange meeting and tries to buy insecticide with his own money. It's only then that even Paul takes him seriously--and is glad he did.

21

Homing Pigeon

After he trades some old sports equipment for a homing pigeon, Timmy's next task is to train her. But only Lassie--and a male pigeon attracted to the new homer--knows ""Bright Eyes"" is endangered by a hawk on her first long-distance flight.

22

The Explorers

After an Explorer lectures Timmy's Cub Scout den, the inspired den goes on a hike and wonder into the Badlands where they become stranded on a rock ledge.

23

The Epidemic

When Paul tends a neighbor's herd, he discovers they have hoof-and-mouth disease--and now Princess, the new purebred cow he invested $1000 in, and the Martin's old cow Bessie are threatened with slaughter.

24

Fur-Coated Killer

A neighbor may lose his new means of moneymaking when minks from his mink farm are blamed for slaughtering chickens. But the killer turns out to be something more dangerous: a wolverine.

25

Judgment Seat

The father of a new girl Timmy befriends owns the land Paul is renting for his alfalfa crop--and plans to flood the field before Paul can harvest it.

26

The Elephant

After Timmy and other schoolchildren saved up enough money to purchase an baby elephant for the Capitol City Zoo, the city authorities find there is no place to house it, so, newly named ""Peanuts"" by Timmy, it ends up boarding at the Martin farm.

27

Clementine

Timmy saves the life of a rooster that Paul only suspects was involved in cockfighting, but a neighbor's hired hand recognizes ""Clementine"" as a champion fighter named Dynamite who was left for dead.

28

The Puppy Sitter

Lassie, who turns out not to be expecting puppies, refuses to have anything to do with Henry Enders' setter puppies that Timmy is taking care of.

29

The Champ

Everyone makes fun of Timmy's runt piglet, Champ.

30

The Phone Hog

Paul is trapped in his truck by a downed power line during an electrical storm, but Timmy can't call for help because a garrilous woman is constantly on the telephone.

31

The Chase

After watching two callous city hunters and their rented dog ruin a neighbor's fence, Timmy and Cully Wilson lead the men on a chase through the forest using a young raccoon's scent as bait. It's a grand practical joke--until one of the unexperienced men accidentally shoots the other.

32

The Killer

Sam Burke buys a savage German Shepherd named Bismarck after a bobcat depredates his flock of sheep and attacks the Martin stock as well, leaving a lamb orphaned--but Lassie knows that something else was responsible for the killings.

33

The Moved Monument

Paul, Henry Enders, and some other farmers may lose some valuable farmland--and Paul an expensive fence--due to a road building project. Henry Enders tells the Martins he understands some of the original survey markers were once moved, so the two men try to find any that were not replaced.

34

The Alligator

Flip will get Timmy's turtle Myrtle if Lassie behaves like the greedy dog in Aesop's Fables, and indeed she does drop her bone--because she saw the escaped alligator that's taken up residence in the lake.

35

The Wrong Gift

When Willy's expensive Mother's Day gift and Timmy's more frugal choice are mixed up, Timmy can't bear to tell his mother after seeing her pleased reaction--so he takes steps to earn the additional money Willy's gift cost.

36

The Fog

The Martins' weekend camping trip turns dangerous when a treacherous fog envelops their camping area--and Timmy, stuck in a sinkhole in the swamp while searching for Lassie, is threatened by a maurauding wolf.

37

The Hermit

Timmy befriends the hermit who recently moved into the area, a man a visiting construction worker and his son scorn.