The Incredible Shrinking Forest

"The Incredible Shrinking Forest" is the thirteenth episode of the second season of Bambi, and the fifty-seventh episode overall. It first aired on March 17, 2001, on ABC as part of Disney's One Saturday Morning.

Summary
The ants become tired of being stepped on by the forest residents (including normal forest animals), so to teach them a lesson, they use magic to shrink them all down to their size and make them learn to cope with them and work and live like them or else they will remain ant size forever. The forest animals learn an important lesson about the Ant Society as they work and live like ants, providing food for the queen ant and delivering babies to her, as well as defending themselves against any danger that may confront them.

Plot
The episode starts with the ants gathering fallen apples from the apple tree, like they usually tend to do. Just then, however, their work is disrupted when Thumper runs through the meadow and tramples them, making them very cross and angry. This goes on for sometime, leaving the ants' work that they have set out to do to constantly be disrupted and their lives to often be interuptted by forest animals. Eventually, the ants become so fed up with the forest residents ruining their work and disrupting their society, that they decide to meet up to discuss their issue.

The meeting involves the ants having enough of being the lessers of the forest and thusly plot their revenge against them. So they turn to the ant alchemists, who is said to have magic spells that can be used whenever necessary for better or for worst, for help. Realizing that they have the power to shrink the entire forest, they come up with a good idea to shrink down the forest inhabitants (including normal forest animals) to their size in order to teach them a lesson about their race and prepare the magic.

Meanwhile, Bambi and Thumper are playing in the meadow, when suddenly, a beam comes out of the anthill and hits the entire forest, shrinking them, and almost every other forest resident, all down to the size of ants. Lost and confused, they wander around the place they once all know too well until they get apprehended by the worker ants and thrown into the Ant Society, where the triumphant ants awaited their arrival. They are then greeted by those same worker ants, who tell them to start working immediately or else there will be "other consequences".

Each of the group is assigned different jobs (delivering food to the queen ant, taking care of the ant pupas and practicing to ready themselves against whatever dangers may await them), each of which they all screw up one at a time. Meanwhile, the sly foxes search for Bambi and the group until they inevitably find them, at first thinking them to be "weird ants". After putting two and two together, they try to discover how they got to that size, but they eventually give up and just decide to attack.

While the others work hard (and eventually gain more experience), Ronno plans on how to get out and leave the others behind. Accidentally, he bumps into a worker ant, making it lose its fruit that it was delivering to the Queen. It becomes angry with Ronno, thinking that he has just disrespected the queen ant. Ronno tries to apologize, but the worker ant just storms off, leaving Ronno to angrily stare at him.

Looking at the fruit for an idea, he gets a twisted idea to lead the Queen's monarchs to believe that Bambi and his friends set him up to knock over the fruit, bringing them all into the queen's throne for a trial, including every other forest resident, which appears to not go well for them at first. However, just as they're about to be punished (his friends will become imprisoned, The Great Prince will be eaten, and Bambi will become so small that he gets stepped on by the ants), the trial gets interrupted by an attack from the Foxes. Ronno runs and hides, but the others help the ants protect their colonies. Due to this, the ants reward the group by returning them to their normal size. However, they take the foxes and keep Ronno, punishing them for their acts.

After shrinking the foxes down to their size, the ants decide to let Bambi and his friends go and have fun, having learned about their appreciation for the Ant Society. In court, the Queen Ant ruled that since the foxes have tried to attack their race, and that Ronno had set Bambi and his friends up for a false act, the foxes will be locked up in the ant prison, while Ronno is to be shrunk down to a size even smaller than the ants, and be stepped on by the worker ant whom Ronno had accidentally bumped into earlier, thus getting his revenge and giving him the feeling of being stepped on by an ant.

Production
While working on this episode, the crew members would look at deleted ideas from the first film, as well as a previous episode, "Trotting Like an Ant" to get some inspiration.

More coming soon!

US

 * Bambi: The Complete Second Season (DVD)

Reception
Coming soon!