Oolite Bulletins

Good idea...

You know what the trumble mission should do...

After baking the fury pest, you end up with a cargo hold full of pelts you can sell to recover some cost of replacing the chewed up equipment. Have some try to sell you a trumble every so often. Then fill you cargo bay with food. Wait until they breed and eat all the food. Sun-skim to bake them. Sell the slightly crispy fur. The challenge it to time it right so they don't eat you of ship and home first.

There would be a market for trumble skin products among the spacer set. Trumble fur seat covers anyone

Trumbles do make great pets, as long as you have them de-sexed. Since the don't breed, the eat very little. I have a chunky one called Trev the Ninth who I trained to does some neat tricks.

Mayhaps you can train him to board other ships and eat their systems?

wackyman465 wrote:

Mayhaps you can train him to board other ships and eat their systems?

No, most spacer's shoot the poor little guy on sight; and like I said, once they are de-sexed they don't eat much. Most days, he can only eat a small can of pet food. And I do mean the can too

One of the tricks I've tought him is to crawl through all the ducts of my ship, as self propelled dust mop. He's also great at finding keys to my Wolf when I lose them.

I'm still working on getting him to stop sleeping in the fuel scoop. I don't want the little fellow squished when I scoop up some pirate's ill gotten gains.

KZ9999 wrote:

He's also great at finding keys to my Wolf when I lose them.

Have you seen the Lincoln MKS ads?
Starships don't need keys.

KZ9999 wrote:

Trumbles do make great pets, as long as you have them de-sexed.

Hmmm. As trumbles reproduce asexually, I don't really see how you could de-sex them. It's like preventing a bacteria from binary fission. How would you do that? In case of trumbles the only way I see is food depravation...

Commander McLane wrote:

KZ9999 wrote:

Trumbles do make great pets, as long as you have them de-sexed.

Hmmm. As trumbles reproduce asexually, I don't really see how you could de-sex them. It's like preventing a bacteria from binary fission. How would you do that? In case of trumbles the only way I see is food depravation...

Or cooking.

Captain Hesperus

By golly, I shore am partial sometimes to a niiice slow-cooked trumble rib....MMM

[/southern accent]

Commander McLane wrote:

KZ9999 wrote:

Trumbles do make great pets, as long as you have them de-sexed.

Hmmm. As trumbles reproduce asexually, I don't really see how you could de-sex them. It's like preventing a bacteria from binary fission. How would you do that? In case of trumbles the only way I see is food deprivation...

Trumbles are hermaphrodite mammals and as such have male and female organs that exist in one sex cluster. As a species, they have a high genetic variance within individuals to prevent negative mutiation due to inbreeding. A single trumble can only produce single offspring, a mating pair can produce a litter up to 8 pups. Single parent trumbles have a sped up life cycle to accelerate the repopulating of a trumble patch. Once the population reaches the natural levels, about 2000 per square km, they return to a paired breeding cycle which produced slow growing, low food consuming, slow breeding but long lived trumbles.

Ecologists believe that this bizarre reproductive system is an outcome from being the prey of a large carnivore species that operate in herds. Trumble trills (the name of a group of trumbles) are decimated by these roving carnivore herds on a season basis and so must reproduce at accelerated rate to be able to survive the next season. This is only supposition as no one has been able to find the trumble planet of origin.

One effect that is known, is that for some reason which scientists can not explain as of yet, the trumble extreme sex drive become 'over rev'ed' when in the present of wormhole technology (torus or hyper drives). This is why so many commanders have been eaten out of ship and home. GCW does not ban the sale of trumbles, but recommends that they are transported in cryro-statis and should be sold de-sexed.

As for having keys to my Wolf. My starship has be modified to use this archaic form of technology as the ultimate form of security. Ships thief's know how to crack digital radio/sonic codes, override voice/hand/retina prints and beat any password know to man; but they are completely stymied by a mechanical lock because no-one uses them. Anyway, where else am I going to put my 'I've Been To Earth' key fob