Columnists
The Eureka Moment
looked into his bowl of Cheerios and observed an earwig floating in it, he immediately thought he had been caught in one of those “Hey waiter, what’s this fly doing in my soup?” jokes. So he spent a few moments trying to drum up a droll riposte. ( “Sir, he couldn’t find a parking space at Lake on the Mountain” was the best he could come up with on the spot.)
His second reaction was more profound. Finding the earwig in his cereal was in fact his “Eureka” moment, one worthy of contending with Archimedes in his bathtub or Newton sitting under his apple tree.
Why hadn’t he made the connection before? The County is overrun with earwigs this year. They’re everywhere—in your shoes, your washbasin, your bedsheets, your curtains. They have no redeeming social purpose. They’re ugly. Our instinctive reaction is to stamp the heck out of them, without any remorse or acknowledgment of the Buddhist principle of the sanctity of all forms of life.
And then Mr. Hempstead remembered that in the last few years, there has been a burgeoning industry in crickets— which can be dried, incinerated and turned into perfectly acceptable, albeit slightly crunchy, foods for humans. What was to stop him from doing the same with earwigs, he wondered.
A little research led him to the conclusion that at worst, earwigs had no deleterious impact on humans. In fact, they could make a great filler to accompany some other zesty food like tofu or hummus. According to the Backpacker website, “Earwigs are edible and safe to eat. They don’t have stingers. They don’t have venom.” And when compared to insect alternatives—such as woodlice, grubs, scorpions and slugs—they start looking pretty good.
And so here he was in the County, overrun with earwigs. And he thought of China’s highly successful campaign during the Great Leap Forward to eradicate the “Four Pests,” (mosquitoes, rats, flies and sparrows) without using any fancy machinery but the good old-fashioned volunteerism of billions of ordinary Chinese. If, he reasoned, he could secure the co-operation of billions of County residents, he would have an abundant supply of earwigs to form the raw material for his product.
But what sort of food product does Mr. Hempstead plan to prepare from all his earwigs? “That is still being worked out,” he admitted, “but it will be somewhere between a granola bar and an after-dinner mint. Definitely upscale. And if that doesn’t work, we can always sell it to some hamburger chain as meat filler.”
And once he is seized by an idea, Mr. Hempstead is not one to sit around until doubts overtake him. He has leased an abandoned cheese factory in the County, and has received approval in principle for a $10 million forgivable loan from the federal government for its conversion into an earwig roasting plant. And he is offering to pay local earwig collectors to bring him their spoils, for which he will pay them five dollars per quart. “The County is not Red China,” he notes. “You’ve got to give people a bit of a financial incentive to collect and drop off their dead earwigs.”
But the involvement of County residents won’t stop with supplying the insect raw material. Someone has to sample Mr. Hempstead’s concoctions and advise what works and what doesn’t. “County people have sophisticated palates,” he says, “so they can stomach pretty much anything.”
And when it comes to marketing his product beyond the borders of the County, Mr. Hempstead will also be looking for County residents to be ambassadors and offer testimony to the freshness and tastiness of his product. ‘Fortunately, County people are good at at appearing enthusiastic too,” he notes.
Mr. Hempstead points out that his product’s association with the County’s good name will count for a lot. “I can see it now,” he says. “Made from genuine Prince Edward County earwigs. The original and still the best.” But for his main marketing ‘hook’, he is again relying on County people to come up with something. “I’ve been toying with the concept of ‘Just Chew It’,” he asserts, “but I realize that’s a bit derivative.”
Mr. Hempstead sees the scale of the earwig business surpassing the County’s mushroom business in as little as five years, “It is bound to bring tons of high paying jobs into the County,” he asserts, “enough for people to dream of being able to afford to rent a campsite in the County.”
He himself dreams of the County embracing the earwig as its official insect symbol; and of it hosting an annual earwig festival in June, when earwigs are at their most plentiful. He envisions a parade down Main Street, earwig bakeoffs and earwig impersonator contests; and introducing new mascots—tentatively named Erroll and Esme Earwig—to build bonds with young people and keep them wanting to come back to the County again and again. It’s not too soon to get started on this idea, he says. “I hear Peterborough is thinking of starting a Bedbug festival in early July. We will want to nip any potential competitors in the bud.”
If only more of us were big dreamers, ideas like those of Mr, Hempstead might never see the light of day. May we all pray that our dreams turn into such Eureka moments as his.
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