Having the Neighbors Over

It had been two and a half years since the death of the last Australian Range Cricket, which had been eaten by the Duke of New New Sydney in a much publicized feast. Humanity had achieved its final victory and now ruled the Earth as its sole surviving macroscopic species. This meant, of course, that we had nothing left to eat but each other.

I remember I started with my neighbor, Baines, a stringy but tasteful young fellow. Tangy, as I recall, but perhaps it is just the memory. Then old Mrs. McKeaver, and by the time I got to the Nelsons in 407 I had developed what I like to think of as a finely-tuned palate for the niceties of human flesh. I was especially fond of the thick muscles of the arms and legs, and so I began trading away the heads, torsos, and viscera to some of my less vulnerable neighbors, in exchange for the tastier bits. They were usually eager to snap up a two-pounds-for-one deal. I began "collecting" in earnest, and I acquired old freezers from now abandoned houses to preserve the precious arms and legs I was accumulating.

Everybody thought I was nuts, since pound-for-pound I was getting the short end of the deal, but later that year most of them were wiped out by a virulent disease transmitted by the consumption of human livers.

Who's laughin' now, huh?

Moral: People with extra limbs are smarter.

DG