Scurrying Little Friends
I would like to remind all Shalampaxians of the strict policy against keeping pets in Shalampax’s building. Unfortunately, this rule is currently being broken and some people are spoiling things for the rest of us.
This situation came about purely by accident. It seems that the anthropologists that we had for dinner back in early April did not arrive alone. We are now infested with cockroaches.
Some Shalampaxians have been keeping the cockroaches as pets. They—the Shalampaxians, not the cockroaches—have been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to train the cockroaches to do tricks such as roll over, shake hands, fetch sticks and play dead.
Playing dead permanently is a cockroach trick that most of us would appreciate. The other tricks are less appreciated.
Even if you could domesticate cockroaches, it is, as I said at the beginning of this post, against the laws of Shalampax to keep them as pets.
The question is, what should you do with your new pets in light of their illegality? Rottentomato, owner of Shalampax’s Most Expensive Restaurant advises that they are a very good source of protein and can be a nice addition to a stew. If you are too squeamish to cook the cockroaches yourself, Rottentomato will be happy take your cockroaches and add them to his menu.
You have a new food source growing on Shalampax besides coconuts – how exciting. Given the slob nature of the locals, the cockroaches must be eating the food leftovers scattered about the apartments and populating like, well, cockroaches.
That Rottentomato is a culinary genius – the Alice Waters of Shalampax since he is embracing the very popular local-farmer-produced food sources philosophy.
@David: Yes, the cockroaches are really fattening up on our droppings. There’s a lot of good eating there. And, you make a good point — it’s “green” agriculture. There’s no greenhouse-gas-spewing transportation needed to get the cockroaches from their source to our plates.
Rottentomato can be a culinary genius at times, but that’s usually only when he finds a food he can get for free and then charge a fortune to serve to his patrons who are too lazy to prepare the free food themselves.