Ye Old Skwib

I’m not sure if you can get them here on Earth, but on my home world, I was fond of employing two species.

For covert strikes, it’s really hard to top the Veefnovian Ninja Beetle. The exoskeleton of the beetle is the hardest material this side of the Diamond Nebula, and it has most easily annoyed temperament in the galaxy (except for some Hollywood stars and “princesses” found here on Earth.) The best way to engage the beetle is to put it in a matchbox with a small amount of genetic material from your target (for some reason nasal hair or ear wax works best), and shake it around.

The Ninja Beetle will be homicidally irritated, and wrongly blame your target as the source of its vexation.

Also, the beetle is a master with nun chucks, shuriken and an insect-scaled kusari-gama. (Not that these are necessary — it usually kills its victims by burrowing into its brain through a convenient cranial opening.) Just make sure that it doesn’t get stepped on — despite its tough carapace, it’s still just a bug.

What about surveillance though?

Oh, squirrels, definitely.

The Merovingian Paparazzi Rodent (from 5Leaze, I believe) is my favorite species. Just make sure you have an iron-clad contract with them before you send them out — if they think they can earn a quick buck by selling your surveillance photos to Time or Die Welt, they will.

P.S. Mental_floss has a nice roundup of other Earth animals used for spying. Hat tip to Old Is the New New for breaking this important story.

Next time: I’m pretty sure my cat is writing snide comments about me on Facebook — how do I get it to stop?

Well, you’re out of luck for at least a couple more days.

Once the book has finally been released, then the news media will find another story to focus on, and babble on relentlessly about it for a while. Maybe it will be about a missing white woman from South Carolina, and maybe it will be about how John Travolta is breaking new artistic ground by dressing like a woman AND wearing foam-rubber fat suit.

Back on my home planet, Neecknaw, we had a similar problem with our Zimplavian Sewer Slugs. We use the simple life form to help keep our pipes clean — a necessary, important task without which Neecknabian society would quickly collapse — but every once in a while the Zimp Slugs would get a little obsessive about what disgusting refuse they would clean first.

For a while, they got intensely interested in discarded hats from our famous Gorriloids-with-Fezzes Brigade. (They always seemed to focus on “famous” primates.) But instead of consuming the rotting headgear, the Zimp Slugs started collecting the moldy fezzes, trading them back and forth — sometimes the same hat — for several weeks at a time. The sewers became clogged, and well, let’s just say that Neecknabian society was overly fragrant that summer.

Luckily we had a new shipment of reporters in town from Planet Ceenen, and they thought it was “the most important story about Neecknaw” in decades.

So we had them clean up while they were down there, taping actuality.

Next time: If the element of surprise is half the key to victory, what is the other half? It’s not spiders is it? Spiders freak me out!