Chen Hao shoved his feet into the dried shoes, the soles still covered in mud, making a squeaking sound as he stepped on them. Just as he was about to lift his leg, his peripheral vision caught sight of the feed bucket in the corner of the chicken coop—the lid was askew, as if he had carelessly opened it that morning and forgotten to close it properly.
He walked over, casually lifted the lid of the bucket, and scraped his fingers against the inside. A thin layer of grayish-white particles barely covered the bottom. He crouched down and used his fingernail to pick at the remaining debris on the inner wall, his brow furrowing slightly.
“This thing wasn’t like this yesterday,” he muttered, looking up at the record board hanging on the wall. It read in charcoal: “Daily consumption: 1.8 kg”, with a line of smaller print below: “Inventory ≈ 2.5 days”.
He stared at the string of numbers for three seconds, then suddenly stood up, his shoes scraping against the ground with a screeching sound. He jogged across the muddy ground, his heels kicking up a few drops of wet dirt, heading straight for the main house.
The door was ajar; he kicked it open, sending a gust of wind through.
"Nana! Something terrible has happened!"
Nana stood in front of the control panel, her mechanical fingers lightly tapping the air, and a semi-transparent stream of data slowly archived. She turned her head, her optical eyes flashing slightly: "Heart rate 118 per minute, breathing rate increased. I suggest you sit down before you speak."
"Sit my ass!" He slammed his hand on the edge of the table. "There's less than half a bucket of feed left! Three days? At most two and a half! Thirty adult chickens and twenty chicks, they'll throw a tantrum if they miss one meal, and if they miss two, we'll have to start plucking our own feathers!"
Nana pulled up the nutrition model, and the data plummeted. "The predicted supply interruption time is 72 hours later, with an error margin of ±4 hours. Intervention is definitely needed."
"We can't let the chickens eat dirt."
“Yes,” she said calmly, “but not ordinary soil.”
Chen Hao was taken aback: "You don't mean to make me dig for earthworms, do you? Let me tell you, last time that red one wrapped around my finger for five minutes before it let go. Now I have a phobia of any soft-bodied animal."
“It’s not an earthworm.” She turned and walked to a closed hatch in the corner, the metal panel sliding open silently. “It’s a cricket.”
Chen Hao followed her through a narrow passage into an underground side chamber. This place, originally part of a cave, had been converted into a small laboratory. Incubators were neatly arranged, one of them lit with a green light. Nana opened the door, and a faint scent of straw and dried carapace wafted out.
Inside the box, hundreds of dark brown insects crawled on the straw layer, their antennae trembling and their limbs making a soft rustling sound as they scraped across the surface.
Chen Hao took a half step back: "Wait... is this the scene of an alien invasion?"
“An improved breed of domestic cricket.” Nana reached out and took out a small box of live samples. “It has a protein content of 68%, moderate fat content, and a fiber structure that is easy for poultry to digest. The space required for each kilogram of production is only one-tenth that required for corn cultivation.”
"It sounds wonderful, but what if they break out in the middle of the night and throw a party on my face?"
"The vocal organs have been removed, and the range of movement is restricted to the breeding box. In addition, the daily light cycle is controlled to be sixteen hours of darkness to suppress the reproductive impulse."
"You even schedule their time?" Chen Hao stared wide-eyed. "This isn't raising insects, it's disciplining problem teenagers."
Nana didn't reply, and carried the box back to the chicken coop. She opened a corner of the fence and gently poured about ten live crickets into the feeding trough.
As soon as they landed, several chicks jumped up as if they'd been scalded, fluttering and crashing into the netting. One little black-feathered chick even burrowed directly under the haystack, shaking like a cell phone on full vibrate.
"So scared?" Chen Hao scratched his head. "They don't eat insects, but do you think insects will eat them?"
“The unfamiliar form triggers instinctive avoidance.” Nana brought up a holographic projection and zoomed in on a cricket slowly crawling. “I suggest we start with taste adaptation training, beginning with mixing powders.”
"So, you can't just serve it directly on the plate; you have to lie to them and say it's a new flavor of cornmeal?"
"The logic holds true."
That afternoon, Nana dried and ground a batch of crickets into a fine powder, mixed it with the remaining feed at a ratio of 5%, and pressed it into pellets. In the evening, when feeding them, she and Chen Hao squatted outside the enclosure, watching the first wave of speckled chickens approach.
The hen sniffed the air, then looked up at the sky, as if contemplating its destiny. It pecked once, then again, and finally buried its head in its food. After finishing, it nudged its companion with its claws, as if to say, "Don't just stand there, something good is coming."
"It's done?" Chen Hao grinned.
The chicks on the other side remained huddled in the corner, watching from afar, and no one dared to approach.
“Partially acceptable,” Nana noted. “The individuals who consumed it had normal metabolism, and their excrement had no abnormal color or odor.”
"Looks like this food may not look like food, but it tastes alright." Chen Hao broke off half of the remaining flatbread and held it in his hand. "Do you think they think we changed chefs?"
"Chickens do not have the concept of chefs."
"Hey, can't you just cooperate a little?"
"I can repeat what I just said, but in a different tone."
"Forget it." He waved his hand. "We'll start breeding tomorrow and build a proper insect breeding area. Anyway, these things don't take up much space, much better than growing feed."
As night deepened, the chicken coop quieted down. Adult chickens returned to their nests one after another, while chicks huddled together for a nap. Nana stood in a corner, her optical eyes continuously scanning the behavioral data of the feeding area. The internal system marked "Insect Protein Feeding Protocol v1.0" as a pending project, setting its priority to "high."
Chen Hao sat on a wooden stump by the door, still clutching half of the food cake mixed with insect powder in his hand. He looked down at his hand and suddenly asked, "Do you think... if I eat this too, I can lose five pounds?"
"Humans need to undergo additional processing to remove the fishy smell when ingesting it, and the psychological acceptance of it is generally low."
"I was just asking casually." He sighed and tossed the pancake into the empty bucket. "Looks like the chickens are braver than me."
The next morning, sunlight streamed into the chicken coop as Chen Hao carried an old wooden plank into the cricket rearing area. He leaned the plank against the wall, preparing to build a makeshift shade structure. Nana was adjusting the second batch of temperature-controlled incubators; the number of crickets inside had doubled, and their activity level was stable.
"The temperature is set at 32 degrees Celsius and the humidity is maintained at 45%," she said. "The first round of mating and egg laying is expected to be completed within 24 hours."
"Sounds like a matchmaking agency." Chen Hao tapped the box. "Hopefully they won't try too hard, or we'll really have to implement family planning."
As he was speaking, he suddenly heard a strange thrashing sound behind him.
Looking back, I saw that one of the chicks that had been afraid to eat the insect powder last night had quietly approached the feeding trough. It lowered its head to sniff, hesitated for a moment, then suddenly pecked off a small piece of food and swallowed it whole.
Then, it raised its head, its eyes clear, its wings slightly spread, and let out a short, clear cry.
The other chicks all looked up.
The second one came over.
The third one also moved.
Chen Hao grinned: "Oh, the ringleader has appeared?"
After finishing its meal, the chick spun around in a circle, hopped over to its companion, and nodded its head as if it were promoting a new product.
Nana said softly, "The social imitation behavior has started, and the group's acceptance process may be accelerated."
“That’s good.” Chen Hao patted his pants and stood up. “Once they’ve all started eating insect food, we’ll put up a monument here—'The place where humans first survived on insects'.”
Before he could finish speaking, his foot suddenly slipped.
Looking down, he saw a piece of cricket residue that had leaked from the crack in the box stuck to the sole of his shoe, now crushed into a black mark. He frowned and tried to wipe it off, but then noticed several more live crickets slowly crawling out from the opening and disappearing into the crack in the corner of the wall.
"Huh?" He squatted down. "This thing can find its own way?"
Nana immediately pulled up the monitoring footage: "There is a slight deformation in the sealing strip of the breeding box, and the leakage is currently under control."
“Controllable doesn’t mean there are no problems.” He pointed to the cracks in the wall. “If they really make their home in the wall, wouldn’t we have to hold a pest extermination conference before we even start demolishing or renovating?”
"It is recommended to add a physical barrier layer."
“Then add it.” He stood up and grabbed a plastic spatula from the side. “Let’s start now.”
He bent down to pry open the edge of the floor to inspect the pipes, but stopped abruptly just as the shovel entered the gap.
A very faint rustling sound came from below.
Like countless tiny limbs, slowly moving in the darkness.
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