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From: Alien Spy Threttubray, codename: “null value/null value/heptad”

To:  Orbital Intelligence Communications Node Guiding Intelligence Prymaesst codename: “Mu”.

Swarm Date: Painday; 18^th rotation of Swarm Unblemished Unity; Year of the Screaming Traitor.

“Humans” think of themselves as food.

Well, so do we; but even prior to our invasion and years-long victory feast, the two lesser dominant species on this world are accustomed to treating themselves in exactly the same ways as they preserve surplus food.

Every method of preserving excess livestock and produce is also applied by men and women to themselves with a thoroughness and diligence that would be praiseworthy in Worker Drones back at home, though both the species called women and men use specialist technical vocabulary to denominate food preservation strategies that they apply to themselves.

These techniques for their fodder (and for themselves) include, respectively: wind-drying or jerking (hiking); freezing (golf and queuing for the New Year sales); vacuum packing (International Space Station); soaking in salt and fats (hamburgers); coating in sugar (musicals); pickling in acid and alcohol (the 1960s and Ibiza); smoking (tobacco); irradiation (sunbathing) and jellying (bumper-hugging.)

Though neither of “Earth’s” supreme species (cockroaches and cats) employs any of these (or any other) forms of food preservation themselves, both of the races at the Number One and Number Two spots on planet Trash’s food chain benefit immeasurably from women’s and men’s husbandry, agriculture and cuisine without in any way taking part in production themselves.

It seems likely, therefore, that in some way cockroaches and cats farm or otherwise knowingly oversee bipedal food production to their own benefit in much the same was as our beloved Hive Queen (may She conquer the universe, enslave all sentient life, breed many warriors and live forever) benefits almost exclusively from almost 144/144 parts of the efforts of every other member of The Swarm.

[Strategic briefing # 4: please be aware that the hamburger is by far the most widespread method of meat preservation in the areas of the highest technological and military organisation here on Planet Trash.

In conjunction with a future strategic alliance between the men and the women, this ubiquitous foodstuff might present our incoming Warrior Caste with a formidable combination of high-calorie; protein-rich combat rations and two feisty and aggressive species fully tooled up and armed for segmented egg-stealing tunnel-raiders.  

Please redouble, therefore, your efforts through our networks of bipedal agents of influence to portray hamburgers to the uncommitted “humans” as somehow malign or harmful to bipedal life, along with your campaign of cultural sabotage to render both “human” species unwilling to consume either fat or salt in any useful quantities.

Mu, I really mean this: hamburgers truly are that dangerous to our plans.]

(As an aside, I can find no sign anywhere of that either the cats or the cockroaches are aware of just how large the evolutionary advantage hamburgers would provide to a species which monopolised their consumption.

The cats, in particular, would gain an almost insurmountable advantage even over the cockroaches if they ever controlled access to the hamburger. Fortunately, I have been able to find no evidence - even on the Internet - that this is ever likely to happen, and the very thought of cats actively undertaking a campaign to secure a monopoly of the hamburger or any of its variants is, frankly, laughable.

Curiously, in previous inter-continental conflicts, the “humans” have used food preservation methods on their fellow biped enemies (either real or imagined). 
 

Though their information services instruct the bipeds of “The West” that such methods are reprehensible (I cannot tell why) our helpers on the planet who preach “peace” (which means the military surrender of the most advanced nests of Planet Trash to the mercy of its lower refuse-tunnel rejects) seem to remember the writers of the old recipe book with relish and hope for it to return.

The Host body stirs.

Threttubray out.