It wasn't the increase in sugar prices or the rising cost of packaging
machinery that kept the cookies from being made, but rather a lack of
the cleaner, less salty version of that which covers most of our planet:
water.  The ingredients had been poured into the giant mixing bowl and
aerated, but then left for the flour mites to devour.  It was the latter
(and the interaction between their digestive systems and the baking
soda) that caused the macabre, percussive symphony of popping noises
that were coming from the area around the giant mixing machine.  Odd
that the humans didn't pay it much attention when the sound was that of
the more curious and energetic of a race being annihilated.  The
younger, exploratory mites has been told many times of the dangers of
eating flour from outside of the giant storage bags, but somehow
curiosity and hunger got the better of them.  The strategy now had to
be designed to somehow get the cookie production underway.  Even the
human scouts were now suffering as the mix went unmixed and the cookies
went unsold.

No one would have guessed that the actions of a lab of computer
scientists, engineers, and assorted other folk would so directly affect
the cookie making, but the scouts had for a long time been the
beneficiaries of gracious donations from the lab and they long ago
became rather dependent on them.  The Parmalot milk and the Swiss Miss
hot cocoa were often in short supply, but this was the first time that
anyone could remember a shortage of the Poland Spring water that the lab
received in heavy plastic containers.  The usual method of transfer was
for water to disappear from the pumper container in the 7th floor
kitchen, as this was convenient to the kitchen in which the scouts did
their baking and the pumper provided a means for rapidly transferring a
manageable amount of H20.  Why someone would use the last of the water
and not replace the jug was still a mystery to many, but the difficulty
that it caused for the flour mites and the scouts was rather tangible.
Didn't they know that this was a life and death matter?  The scouts
couldn't lift the jugs, nor could the mites, so water stayed locked in
neat blue plastic walls just out of the reach of those who needed it
most.

Come discuss social responsibility and the legend of the flour mites at
today's...

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G I R L   S C O U T   B E N E F I T
5:30.  7ai.  See you there.
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