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The Earth's Dilemma

It's true the brief history of fleas has been already written
So I won't force you now to again listen
But will keep you up to date
In this latest snippet
From a journalist's most recent visit
Andy Ray for the BBC
Reports now from California
East Anglia, by the sea.
Where he was in a Holiday Chalet
So this experience he does relay
And when you go to sleep at night
Try not to cry
As if we think the end of the world is nigh.

Hello, Andy Ray speaking today
It was last night
The robot flea trundled
Clanking
Dragging a bundle
Noiselessly to me,
But to a millimetre human
One robo-flea
In need of oiling
With all he owned
In a sack perhaps
No bigger
Than a grain of sand,
And in his brain, I'm sure he had the resource,
For a knowledge of the universal was neatly stored.

So surprised I was to find
A tiny robot flea
Trudge past and stop before my eyes.
This proto-arthropodic old invention
Piping in the smallest clatter it was his intention
To ask a question that I couldn't understand or hear
(Even if it was shouted down my ear)
For the flea didn't know I was English
Nor if I understood Sanskrit and Yiddish
This might not be so strange
Nor cause to worry or carry on down the page
And the report could end here
With a swat leaving only a grubby metallic smear
If the flea had not worked as an intergalactic police interrogator
And from his bag he pulled a miniscule amplifier
A lead,
And the Mark III Semi-automatic universal-nano speech translator

The Flea said

The Earth it seems is doomed to unenviable distinction
The only planet to be causing its own extinction.
As the situation has developed and become much clearer
I've been sent by the galactic council, you must take me to your leader?
Now wide-eyed I listened, shocked and awed
That fleas could speak is news fresh and raw.
It flashed across my drowsy mind that my news editor
Wouldn't be too happy with this flea as a political interferer
And just how am I supposed to explain or even deliver
A talking flea to the UK Prime Minister?
What fate is this, is it astrological projection?
That I am chosen for the Earth's protection?
I saw the Flea move a little nearer, lick his lips and with shuffling feet
He looked like he wondered if I tasted sour or sweet.
And then the flea started to say
There is another matter for the galactic council's intervention,
If the Earth cannot resolve its problems by its own invention.
An asteroid has already been sent this way
That will crash to ground next New Yea'rs Day.
The end of the world was set at 2020
But the date has been brought forward because of humans' lust for plenty

Now call me old fashioned, or was I just at this news appalled?
So I rushed out for breakfast before comfort shopping at the mall.

This is Andy Ray for the BBC
Reporting from California, East Anglia, by the sea