donn@sdchema.UUCP (05/26/83)
I keep a 2400 foot tape in a terrarium at home. It's very docile unless provoked, and easy to feed. It likes to have empty plastic tape spools and old, scarred disk platters to curl around while it takes in the sun, but beyond that it isn't too demanding to take care of. It gets along well with the other pets, like our four telephones and two modems; they never give us any trouble. We've sort of been wondering what other people feed their tapes. Ours gets a steady diet of house cats and tennis balls, with the occasional table lamp for variety. It's especially fun to feed it a cat and watch its digestive processes at work (a tape is one of the few pets you can own that actually lets you see its food going down). We discovered that the trick to feeding our tape is to give it a tennis ball as an appetizer, preferably by throwing the tennis ball with considerable force into the center of the tape while it lies coiled on the living room carpet. The tennis ball enhances the tape's telepathic energy, allowing it to attract a nearby house cat with waves of mental force, causing the cat to duplicate the tennis ball's plunge into the center of the tape. The cat then realizes its ghastly mistake, and it struggles violently with the tape; the tape erupts in a tremendous frenzy of raking talons and yawning fangs, and starts bouncing across the floor in kind of drunken dance. Occasionally the cat will squirt free and flash through the kitchen like fried lightning, coming to rest atop the piano from whence it can direct its baleful glare at the tape now waiting patiently on the floor; but eventually the fatal attraction overcomes the cat's sense of self-preservation and the furious battle is again engaged. This is the point where the tape may inadvertently be attracted to table lamps and other furniture, which must be carefully unplugged before the tape hurts itself and any innocent bystanders. The fight can continue for some time, but in the end the poor cat will run out of energy and the last you see of it is a long furry tail flicking listlessly above the pile of tape, like a dilapidated flag of truce. At this point the cat will be asleep and the tape will have sated itself upon the energy, and may be (carefully) replaced in its terrarium. The cat of course is reusable, and will gain a new charge overnight if you throw it outside before going to bed. The tennis ball may have disappeared, in which case you should look upstairs behind the clothes dryer (a natural hyperspatial accretion and dispersion point). I guess my main question is, is so much natural energy healthy for a tape? With bated breath, Donn Seeley UCSD Chemistry Dept. RRCF ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdchema!donn