Trekking Tribble Hunters Terribly Treated

Tribbles are cute and fuzzy--like little furry galactic baby seals.

If something isn't done, the tribbles will eat the entire contents of the storage containers, and then they'll get loose. They'll end up inside air ducts, they'll get into food replicators, and they'll end up cluttering important command control consoles. These tribbles are more than just pests, they can bring down an entire starship!

Several light years away on a peaceful agricultural planet, a conclave of intergalactic protesters creates an orbital blockade. This human force field is intent on blocking the large group of burly tribble hunters from reaching the rich feeding grounds where millions of wild tribbles are grazing.

The hunters say they are merely farmers trying to protect their own crops, and that tribble culling is necessary. If left unchecked, these tribbles would cripple the food economy of an entire sector.

Some of the protesters carry signs that say "Save The Tribbles", "Tribble Hunters Are Warped", and "Remember The Prime Directive". One of the protestors is wearing a tribble-lined jacket, which he says is faux, but it's already too late. That paint isn't coming off anytime soon.

Tribbles aren't dangerous to most humanoid species, however they tend to get rather annoyed by the warrior-race known as the Klingons. They're just healthy eaters (the tribbles), and they can reproduce faster than Earth rabbits, however, no one is really sure how they "do it".

The threat is that the tribbles will eat all the food that the humans need to survive, and so they must be "managed" so that their numbers don't upset the natural order of the galaxy.

The Federation enacted reforms to make tribble hunting more "humane". No more flamethrowers, phaser rifles, or disruptor pistols. Clubbing is the most common method, but it's slow and inefficient, like trying to bash the life out of a billion hairy Nerf balls. No one knows when they're truly dead, although the oozing, drooping guts is a pretty good indicator. Tribble traps and grain poisoning are much more effective, and there are fewer shoulder injuries.

The tribbles are edible, but hardly worth eating. They don't have much meat on their bones, nor do they have any bones for the meat to stick to. And the fur always gets stuck in your teeth. Instead, tribble matter is used for its valuable protein, mostly in food replicators. The tribble fur is sold to textile industries on third-world planets. It takes two or three hundred to make a decent coat. Just so long as "every part" of the tribble is used, nobody raises much of a fuss.

The tribble hunts still go on, but nobody wants to hear about them. Most people understand the reasoning, the necessity of maintaining a manageable population, but no one wants to talk about killing "harmless", innocent tribbles. Why don't people focus on more important issues like galactic warming? Don't they realize that Venus and Mercury were once habitable?

Celebrities like to get involved in the plight of the tribble. Celebrities generate a lot of publicity for the tribble cause and for themselves, of course. Sir Paul McCartney, a well-noted activist, was quoted as saying: "What the fuck is a tribble?" Let it be, Paul. Let it be.