Firemites

Good-bye danger, hello safety! Effective immediately, all new homes will be equipped with firemites. The firemite is a revolutionary new safety feature developed by modern research. It eliminates the need for expensive, inconvenient, and hard-to-use equipment, such as fire extinguishers and smoke alarms. Not to mention fire insurance!

If you own an old, unsafe home, you can have your own firemites installed, simply by applying to Whizzo Safety Products. The nominal cost of installation will be repaid to you many times over in lower insurance costs alone!

The firemite is a shirttail relation of the termite, but it doesn't eat your house! Usually. Oh, no! On the contrary, it preserves your house! Yes! Here's how it works. The firemite actually lives on fire! At the first intimation of conflagration, the industrious firemites surround the fire and eat it! It's as simple as that! No more messy fire extinguishers! No more annoying alarms in the middle of the night! No more loud sirens blaring under your windows!

A few simple precautions may apply. Since the firemite is a relative of the termite, and the firemite lives on fire, it may revert to eating wood, if there is no fire. It is therefore recommended that you feed your firemites, at least every other day, with a roaring fire in the living room. This should more than compensate for any atavistic wood cravings.

In a few very isolated cases, a fairly uncommon mutation may occur that makes the firemite capable of feeding on microwaves. Microwaveable firemites tend to be somewhat larger and more aggressive than their unmutated kin. Should you observe a firemite larger than a cat, or should one kick in your bedroom door and present you with a list of unreasonable demands, you should immediately destroy all your microwave ovens, cell phones, and anything else that may produce a microwave. Then head for the hills. Such incidents are rare ... ish and easy to isolate and correct. So far, one colony of microwaveable firemites has taken over the city of Chicago, and another controls communications for the Eastern Seaboard. Other than these, incidents are rare and well contained.