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- >You are a worker for the Department of Fish and Wildlife's...
- >Oh, forget the spiel. It's the weekend and you're off.
- >You're busy tending to your backyard.
- >It's not fenced in, and given your work schedule, you don't have much chance to maintain it.
- >Fluffy herds wander through and eat your grass, leaving foul-smelling piles in their wakes.
- >Sure, the grass loves it, but the neighbors don't.
- >By the time you're done removing shit, it's after noon.
- >Time to water. You go fetch the hose.
- >Before you can even start walking that way, however, you nearly trip over a fluffy pony.
- >”Owwies! No huwt fwuffy!” he says.
- >This is a pink unicorn with an orange mane and tail and shining red eyes.
- >He shrinks back when you look at him.
- “What are you doing here?”
- >”Fwuffy sowwy, pwease hewp fwuffy...”
- “I don't take in strays.”
- >”Fwuffy no wan' daddy, fwuffy wan' hewp fo' fwuffy fwiends...”
- >You become a little suspicious.
- “Are you a smarty friend?”
- >He nods emphatically. “Smawty fwiend! Hooman pwease hewp fwuffies?”
- >You fold your arms and look down at him.
- >He trembles, but doesn't budge. “No huwt, onwy wan' hewp hewd...”
- >Well, he's being fairly polite about it.
- >He must not have been able to penetrate the fences of the adjacent houses, and came to the only human he could see.
- “What's wrong?”
- >The smarty suddenly looks sullen, more sullen than you've ever seen a fluffy pony before.
- >He starts trot-waddling toward the woods past the end of your property, stopping to look back at you.
- >”Come wif fwuffy?” he asks.
- >Hell, why not.
- >You follow the pink smarty through the trees.
- >For him, the going is slow; his fluff keeps getting caught on small stones.
- >After a few minutes, you finally reach a large rock outcropping.
- >Eleven other fluffies are huddled underneath it. They look up at you fearfully.
- >”Pwease no huwt mumma!” a greenish-grey pegasus cries.
- >There's a problem with this small herd, however.
- >It's summer, prime breeding season for a fluffy.
- >'Season' is a bit of a misnomer, anyway.
- >They're fluffy ponies; their propensity is to mate whenever they feel like it, which is all the damn time.
- >Despite that, there's not a single foal to be found here.
- >You can distinguish the mothers from the rest.
- >There are four including the pegasus, lying on their sides and panting with worry and pain.
- >Their teats are swollen visibly, full of milk for foals that aren't here.
- >”Hooman, pwease hewp fin' babehs?” the smarty pleads, joining his herd.
- >”Wuv babehs! Why babehs go 'way?” another mom asks, this one a dusky blue earth fluffy.
- >”Babehs no wan' miwkies?” a reddish-orange unicorn dam asks.
- >You look around, up in the tree branches and down at the forest floor.
- >There is no telling what happened to their foals.
- >”Pwease hewp, nice hooman! Fwuffies wan' babehs!” the smarty begs again.
- >With a slight sigh, you start walking past the herd and into the woods.
- “Fine, I'll be right back.”
- >”Yay! Hooman hewp fin' babehs!”
- >”Wuv nice hooman! Gif huggies!”
- >You ignore the happy clamor of the ponies as it fades behind you.
- >You'll just walk around for a few minutes, not find anything, then report back to the herd.
- >They'll throw a fit and cry, but there's nothing you can do anyway.
- >As you walk, you find that it's been raining enough to refill the small stream bed that runs back here.
- >Since they're fluffy ponies, you check the stream first.
- >As you have no idea the age of the foals, they may have wandered off.
- >It's very possible that they drowned trying to drink water like the big ponies.
- >There's a collection of rocks in the stream off to your left that you examine.
- >It's free of corpses; if they'd fallen in, the current would have sent them here.
- >Okay, so they didn't drown.
- >There's no way in hell you're going to find them, these woods are massive.
- >After waiting for a while, you start back to the herd to tell them the bad news.
- >That's when the flash of color catches your eye.
- >Above you, the branches bear tufts of brightly colored fluff.
- >The trail of tufts proceeds back the way you came.
- >The fluffies never saw them because they can't look up that high.
- >You didn't see them until the sun was at your back.
- >You follow the fluff trail slowly.
- >A green tuft, upon closer examination, is not a tuft at all, but a shredded corpse.
- >The foal this used to be couldn't have been more than three days old, barely walking age.
- >It's been picked apart by something.
- >You scan the trees again.
- >Almost directly above you is another dead foal, this one a rich tan color.
- >The foal's body is clutched in the talons of a small screech owl, which idly looks back down at you.
- >In nearby trees, other owls roost quietly, waiting for the sun to disappear.
- >That would explain that.
- >Fluffy foals are easy prey for the owls here.
- >If they were walking age, the parents would have taught them to use the bathroom away from where they slept.
- >They complied, and got eaten for their obedience.
- >You walk back to the outcropping, trying to figure out a way to frame this so they'll understand.
- >”Hooman fin' babehs?” the smarty asks.
- >You scratch your head and sigh.
- “I'm sorry. Fly monsters ate your babies.”
- >The little herd huddles together with the childless mothers at the center, babbling fearfully.
- >”F-fwy munsta? Babehs no nummies! Why fwy munsta take babehs 'way?!”
- >The smarty is bitterly angry, at least as bitter and angry as a fluffy pony can be.
- >You wonder which of the dams was his mate, and how many foals he lost.
- >While the rest of the herd tries to console the heartbroken dams, and the smarty vents his frustration, you walk back toward your house.
- >Just as you reach the edge of the woods, something drops in front of you.
- >It's the head of a white unicorn foal. You look up.
- >Another screech owl gazes silently back at you.
- >You look back for a moment before continuing on.
- >No matter how many resources the State puts into controlling the fluffy population, one thing is very clear:
- >Eventually, nature will figure out how to do it far better than humans will.
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