removeMovieClip problem - Wrong notation?

programming flash
1

Last night I put together this little program to help me play around with easing, without having to use Flash 8’s built in functions. The SWF I came up with is at this link:

http://web.syr.edu/~bmbilfie/snakeFunMessed.html

Everything works exactly like how I want it to, except for the subtract circle button. For some reason, instead of removing the last movieclip on the chain from the stage, it removes it, but leaves it on the stage for some stupid reason I can’t figure out. If anyone can take a look at how I’m trying to remove the MC that would be great. This is the code I am using:

for(var i = 2; i <=numCircles; i++){ //attaches the circles
_root.attachMovie(“box”,“box”+ i , i); //which are named box
}

this.onEnterFrame = function(){
    box1.easeTo(_root._xmouse,_root._ymouse,4);
                    for(var i = 2; i &lt;=numCircles; i++){
       this["box"+i].easeTo(this["box"+(i-1)]._x,this["box"+(i-1)]._y,5);
       }
   }

Then this eases every circle, on every frame to the X and Y position of the circle in front of it.

Now I add the circle by increasing the variable numCircles, and reattaching all of the circles.

Now to remove, this code is run everytime the subtract circle button is pressed:

function subtractACircle(){
if(this.hitTest(_root._xmouse,_root._ymouse,true)){
numCircles–;
_root.removeMovieClip(“box”+numCircles);
}
}

And as you can see, it removes it from the chain, but it doesn’t take it off the stage.