HELENA - The oft-ridiculed bill to create a state pancake is no more, as a Senate committee voted late Thursday to kill it.

The Senate Agriculture Committee, which held a hearing on the bill Tuesday, voted to "table" or kill the measure that would have made a huckleberry, whole-wheat pancake the state pancake.

"We've had an entertaining time with this bill," Sen. Terry Murphy, R-Cardwell, before making the motion to table the measure. "I've become convinced that huckleberry pancakes belong on the breakfast table. But I think Senate Bill 232 belongs on the committee table."

The committee voted 6-3 to table the bill.

SB232, sponsored by Sen. Carolyn Squires, D-Missoula, was the brainchild of third-graders from Franklin Elementary School in Missoula.

The schoolchildren contacted Squires last June, and she agreed to sponsor the bill designating a huckleberry whole-wheat pancake as the official state pancake. They chose huckleberries, because they grow in western Montana, and whole wheat to represent eastern Montana's wheat crop.

A supporter of the bill also cooked up some huckleberry pancakes at the Capitol on the hearing day and served them to committee members.

Squires said during the hearing that she'd received plenty of mail saying the bill was a waste of time, but that she considered it a serious exercise because the children had worked hard to come up with the idea and promote it.

That argument, however, didn't convince a majority committee.

"I think these kids learn as much with the bill being tabled as they do if it passes," said Sen. Don Steinbeisser, R-Sidney, and chair of the committee. "That's part of the process. So you can look at it two ways."