The Trouble with Tribbles....
"Francis A. Tribble"? ... aka Frankie Tribble? And the feds believe that's a real name do they?
I can only imagine that when Kirk goes to open the door to the grain storage silo, thousands upon thousands of tiny furry spammers are going to rain down on his head and end up almost completely burying him.
Actually, tribbles are a good metaphor for spam, I guess.
And looking back on it, what the hell did Kirk think was going to happen even if that thing /had/ still been full of grain? Here we are, in the distant future, federation spaceships and computers with brains the sizes of planets, and some idiot still goes and designs a storage silo where the only way to look inside is through a door /underneath/ it? And some other idiot goes and opens the downward-facing door to take a look inside? Coming next week: Captain James T. Kirk saws off a branch while he's still sitting on the wrong end of it.
Come to think of it, how did they get all the grain in there in the first place anway? Two guys, one with a shovel, one opening the door for him to fling a shovelfull of grain upward into it and then trying to shut it quickly before it all rains back down out again?
Well, maybe they had some kind of really advanced anti-granola forcefield that lets tribbles through but keeps wheat grains inside....
Oh, and my only comment on the story is: good! Rats, sinking ship, no honour amongst thieves, all that stuff. Schadenfreude. Wonderful :-)