Transporting the container to the medical bay or science lab would permit the use of force fields whose emitters can be highly focused, permitting containment of the container in question without interfering with the lunches of you or your other crewmates. I’m not sure what emitter configurations are available in your mess hall, but the labs clearly are able to handle such and do so regularly.
We also have learned through unfortunate and perhaps overly-repeated experiences to not make assumptions about unknown cultures. I can’t even recall the number of captain’s logs I’ve read where little blinking lights or some weird rock thing or glowing space object turned out to be intelligent.
I think you are required to document the incident and report it to your commanding officer.