Infected sticks

When my Dad related his incident about bringing a wooden pencil to Australia, I thought it was quite amusing. But then, Australia had its reason. they are not taking any chances with the possibility of Malaysian insects still living inside it. Heck, if let loose, they could threaten the Australian wildlife and in short, screw up the food-chain there.

And so, when I was at Mr. DIY here,
I noticed some weird powder in one
of the packets. These are wooden
skewers and no prize for guessing
where it came from.

One of the imported bugs inside the
packets. Unlike Australia, there is no
stringent checks for items like these.
Heck, it did not even occur to them
that such things could happen.

And so, hanging on the shelves, are these
wooden skewers, home to some foreign
insect which might or might not even be
a native insect, is eating the wood in there.

And what would happen you ask? Well, here is some likely scenario:

1) Someone would complain about the powder left on the shelves. The worker will take a look at it and if he is slightly more intelligent than the bug, he/she will do a 2+2 and look up and onto the packets.

2) The worker might notice this and call his/her Boss who will shout around and then call HQ or some other Bigger Boss who would just say, Baygon it and then dump it into the trash. The bugs enjoy a permanent migration to Malaysia.

3) Some idiot Engineer who writes blogs would return to the scene a week later and end up buying them because he is too cheap to simulate rotten wood for his models.