Not all that Flutters is Gold

I started this one yesterday, just as a tiny bit of fiction, in response to Paula Light’s prompt. It was sufficiently silly, I thought it might be fun to continue it.

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“Butterflies’ urine?”, queried Dave. “That sounds kinda hard to get hold of.”

“Yeah, like you wouldn’t believe. Took us years to perfect that. We have millions of these butterflies flying around this huge greenhouse. We created these fake flowers, they’re like tiny funnels but they have tiny emitters in them, let off this scent. It triggers them to, well…pee. Imagine, something like pheromones. We collect it, then process it into something usable. We’ve got to filter it quite a lot – sometimes they don’t just pee, if you catch my drift.”

“You can’t get much from each butterfly, surely?”

“No, that’s why we need millions of the little critters.”

“And that makes a difference?”

“Oh, yeah, it is all scientifically proven. Their pee contains this really powerful enzyme, it forces the human body to reject carbs. They pass straight on through.” The man was pitching with honed delicacy, he was clearly enthusiastic, and this was a spiel he’d delivered a million times already. “And besides”, the man winked, “you never saw a fat butterfly, did you?”

“How long is this flight?”, wondered Dave.