Coriolanus Rowland's guide

Something interesting I found on Serebii.net: Coriolanus Rowland's Guide to Pokemon Husbandry. It's a guide to pokemon keeping in relation to the real world, written in a professional tone. I find it very entertaining, and you probably will too. I personally couldn't stop cracking up upon hearing the entry on Vanilluxe under agriculture. Here it is, if you're interested:

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Vanilluxe

It is rare that one chooses to farm so dangerous a creature as Vanilluxe (classification uncertain); to put it in context, doing so is roughly equivalent to an animal farmer attempting to farm tigers. Inhabitants of Castelia City will know all too well the danger of feral Vanilluxe; scarcely a week goes by without another person falling to their predation. They are completely silent, and generally follow people for some time through alleyways before swiftly and suddenly freezing their head solid and consuming the remaining flesh on the body; even if they do not have the element of surprise, they are uncommonly difficult to take on in a fight, being largely unaffected by bullets and capable of lowering one's core body temperature to below freezing in less than four seconds. Just looking at them tells you that they are dangerous: their twin faces bear fixed, staring grins and they are almost always surrounded in a haze of icy mist.

Why, then, would any sane person try and farm one of Unova's top predators? The answer is, as with almost everything else in life, money. Vanilluxe's bodies, which work by some mechanism unknown to modern biology, are entirely composed of soft-scoop ice cream of a quality unattainable by conventional methods of production. Vanilluxe ice cream is a delicacy that commands high prices across Northern Europe and Unova; at present, though, this is entirely taken from wild-caught specimens, which are carefully hunted using Fire Arrows produced by the Hyrule Weaponry Corporation. However, as knowledge of these strange creatures increases, ways of containing and sedating them are being discovered, and now the ice cream industry stands on the brink of a revolution: for the first time in human history, it is beginning to be possible to farm their product.

We have established that there is a remarkable financial incentive. How, then, does one go about farming Vanilluxe? With great caution, I would reply. It is worth having an Arcanine to act as a sort of sheepdog and keep them in line; however, getting the so-called Legendary Pokémon out of China can be hell, so perhaps one might settle for Ninetales, which is less effective at this job but easier to obtain. The best way of containing Vanilluxe is still being debated, but I personally lean towards the theory of a converted aircraft hanger, from which at least escape is unlikely.

If any of your Vanilluxe do escape, there is almost nothing you can do except attempt to destroy them. Capturing Vanilluxe takes time and effort; their metabolisms run extremely slowly (like humans, they kill more to pass the time than to obtain food) and any sedative takes at least forty-eight hours to take effect. If they get beyond your farm's boundaries, they will almost certainly kill at least four people, and very probably more; they naturally do well in cities, being skilled at navigating alleys, evading detection and sniping pursuers in the head with long-distance Ice Beams. For this reason, I cannot recommend placing your farm near any major settlement, or even any settlements at all.

Collecting the ice-cream would also be a major problem were it not for a quirk of nature: thankfully, Vanilluxe die after mating, which means that once a year your entire stock will perish, leaving crystalline eggs for next year and several tones of premium ice cream behind.

Diet: Raw flesh. You should operate on a scheme of feast and fast; if you give them too much food, it will go to waste as they will refuse to eat it. I suggest the equivalent of one person of average build (perhaps an estate agent or similarly unloved character) per fortnight per creature.

Housing: As described above. Others recommend underground vaults, which are arguably more secure but often result in in-fighting amongst the group, with the result that several of your valuable animals end up dead.

Size: Up to four and a half feet tall; they do float, though, which means that their eyes are usually level with one's own.

Lifespan: No one is entirely certain how long they live if they do not mate; it does not help that they are all almost completely identical, and individual specimens are therefore hard to track. Otherwise, they die after reproducing.

Evolution: This occurs naturally over the course of eight months, which is why it is impossible to keep, for instance, just Vanillite – which would be far safer.

Breeding: Will occur every year, provided you have an equal mix of males and females, at around the time of the autumn solstice. This lets the young mature through the winter, which is the easiest time of year for them.

Acquisition: Specialist hunters in Sweden, Norway and Unova; there are currently no established breeders, but often one can find baby Vanillite lurking around the warehouses in Driftveil City. There is always the option of capturing an adult in Castelia, but the Vanilluxe there seem to be rather old, and all are well-versed in the art of skulking around a city and killing people who come near them.

Just .