Fourteen hands at the shoulder, it cuts a majestic figure.
Tailored
gloss-paper sleeves protect its legs* from snagging on
undergrowth,
but it's upper body is skinned only with dark foil, which
glistens as it
turns** its head in the breeze.
Stealth gets the huntress within bowshot,
but a noise*** at the
wrong
moment sets her quarry bounding away. The arrow grazes it,
and
when she runs up, she finds nothing but telltale flakes on the
ground;
smells like 65% cocoa solids.
But it's tiring. It can't have got far. In fact ... the only place it
could be
hiding is in ... that thicket. She sets aside her bow and brings
out a
knobkerry. Nerves jangling, she closes in.
It springs. She strikes. Something shatters - something
moulded from a
quarter- inch thickness of dark chocolate - and it's all over.
The legs
flail,
twitch and are still.
The solid chocolate parts are articulated a bit like plate
armour. The
electromechanical parts are sealed inside a washable cover,
for ease
of
re-use. Some of the ganache entrails inevitably go to waste,
but no- one
said this was an *efficient* way to eat chocolate.
And that, my friends, is a *real* chocolate hunt.
NB, This product is not suitable for warm climates. Also, do
not hunt
Choculax venabilis with dogs, unless you want them to die by
caffeine
heart attack.
*A light metal endoskeleton supports its weight.
**Servo motors, internally mounted battery pack.
***To make it sporting, the huntress carries with her a
transponder and
microphone, so that her location is always, in fact, known to
her
quarry's
on- board computer, but its software will only activate "fight
or flight"
behaviour when she makes a sound within a certain distance
of it,
adjusted for wind direction.