SYNOPSIS:

Cormac, a stonefly, and his friend Latch, a trapdoor spider, look desperately for an occupation so that they can provide for their families. Cormac stumbles across a giant trash pile in a trailer park. Cormac takes from the trash pile a single button to use as a dinner table. A little while later Cormac and Latch are trapped under a mushroom after a surprise thunder storm and a group of ants buy the button from Cormac to use as an umbrella for three mustard seeds, which is currency for bugs. The next day Cormac decides to go back to the trash pile to retrieve more things to sell. With his new found wealth Cormac buys his family a new house away from the creek and the very predatorial frog, Richard McRibbits. The house is a mansion made entirely from grass. After Cormac finds an old shoe in the trash pile (an ultimate and very expensive treasure and a hot tub for bugs) Cormac signs a deal with the grasshoppers to give them half of the seeds made from his new found “trash empire”, but when the grasshoppers go back to the trash pile the humans set it on fire to get rid of the trash, killing more than half of the grasshoppers. Because of the incident with the fire, the grasshoppers become angry and form a mob and burn down Cormac's house by putting a shard of glass they found in the pile up to the sun, killing Cormac's oldest son and causing him to lose an arm. At Cormac's son's funeral Latch suggests that he shut down his company to avoid any more trouble which leads to a physical fight. Near the end Cormac is on his death bed when tells his son not to make the same mistakes he did, and tells him that mistakes can loop, that mistakes are sort of like a cycle. At the very end Cormac's son discovers a new trash pile, he grabs out a button, it suddenly begins to rain, and an ant standing beside him asks if he can own the button for three mustard seeds to use as an umbrella, and Cormac's son agrees.