A story for y’all today - chickens eating microfluffs as part of ecosystem management. Enjoy!
As a seasoned gardener, I’m used to managing all kinds of “pests.” It’s in quotes, you see, because I’m one of those hippe permaculture fucks that doesn’t like to use labels like “bad bugs” and “good bugs.” Everything has its place, everything is just doing what nature is telling it to do, a weed is only a plant in a place I don’t want it, etc. etc. Even invasives like starlings aren’t doing anything “wrong” by existing, and a fact that often sends me into a spiral of ethical dread about my responsibility to the environment.
But then I encountered microluffies.
There had been a little bit of grumbling in all of my gardening forums and chats about feral fluffies. They were generally a scourge of urban alleyways, nesting in cardboard boxes, chewing through garbage bags for rotten food, shitting and pissing and birthing all over the place. There were a couple lawsuits against Hasbio for allowing such wretched creatures to proliferate, and local governments had begun to develop extermination programs, but it was all a little too late. The damage was done, and the fluffy menace began to leech from the cities into suburbia and rural towns.
That said, it wasn’t anything like roving gangs of feral hogs or Australian rabbits or fucking kudzu or bindweed, at least not in the plains. Nobody was surprised when feral fluffies began to take over Florida.
But fluffies didn’t fare well here in the midwest - your average fluffy bumbled through the grass like a nauseatingly colorful and loud children’s candy bar, and hawks and coyotes were quick to rip those wrappers apart.
Furthermore, most fluffies were accustomed to human food or kibble, and had no idea that they could eat grass. They simply wandered, searching for the legendary “wild sketties.” If they weren’t eaten, they usually just starved.
Microfluffies, however, were a different story. While no smarter than regular fluffies, and still easy victims for snakes, birds, and fish, their small size afforded them slightly more secrecy as they made their way into barns, croplands, and the colorful backyard garden, where food was abundant and easy to grab.
It was then people began to see corn stripped down by tiny microfluff mummahs to feed their babbehs, silos of grain serving as shit-stained pools for microfluff chirpies to play in, and tomatoes stolen off the vine to make “sketti sawuce.” More calories to develop their little brains and more time alive than their larger fluffy counterparts meant they had more time to realize the true bounty of food nature had to offer, putting flowers and ornamentals on the menu too. For some farmers, microfluffies seemed to descend upon their land like a swarm of locusts. Microfluff specific pesticides are in development as we speak.
Fittingly, it was an eviscerated spaghetti squash that brought my attention to a microfluffy infestation in my own backyard. I imagine some fluff heard me talking about the squash, the legendary and coveted wild sketti. So, it bore a hole in the squash and tore the guts out, leaving a stringy trail all the way to a nest it had created in the corner of my yard. I knelt down and pushed grass aside to see a fuchsia microfluff with an ultramarine-blue mane sleeping. She was roughly the size of a potato, her little babbehs sleeping soundly around her, about seven of them, the size of peanuts. Without hesitating, I grabbed her, startling her awake. She screeched, and a little stream of piss ran down my hand. A couple of her babies tumbled off of her body onto the grass, chirping, crying, and flailing around like baby rats.
“HOOMIN MUNSTAH! BAD UPPIES! BAD UPPIES!!!”
“Did you eat my fucking spaghetti squash?”
“S-sketti sqwash? Fwuffy hab wiwd yewwow sketties, a-an sketties help mummah make milkes fo hungwy babbehs.”
“That didn’t belong to you. Didn’t your mummah ever tell you not to steal?”
The fluffy began sobbing.
“Fwuffy didn kno…fwuffy sowwy…babbehs so hungwy…”
I felt a pang of guilt in my gut, but I thought about my spaghetti squash. I took another look around to see that other things had been chewed on. I saw torn up flower petals (on my native coreopsis and echinaceas, no less), chewed up sunflower seeds, and it looks like some small carrots had been uprooted too. There was no doubt about it - this was a the beginning of a pest problem, and I needed to deal with this invasive species. These things were no better than Japanese beetles. Who knows, they could even be worse - and I didn’t want to find out what that looked like.
A lightbulb went off on my head. Certainly there was an ecologically sound and permaculturally appropriate way to deal with this infestation. I didn’t need chemicals, I wasn’t about to throw them in the trash, I didn’t even need to go through and manually squish these shitrats myself - all I needed was a predator to balance things out.
“You know, I have my own babbehs to feed too. And I think you and your babbehs will make the perfect treat for them.”
The fluffy gasped and thrashed in my hand, flailing about and trying to bite my fingers in between screams and sobs. It wasn’t very effective.
“BAD HOOMIN! BIG MUNSTAH! NU TAKE BABBEHS!!! FLUFFY HATECHU!!! HATECHU!!!”
With the little shit still in my hand, I walked over to my chicken coop and run. Conditioned to know that papa holding something pink and wriggly in his fingers meant that he had something delicious, all five of them - Bertha, Poundcake, Strep Throat, Minnie, and my rooster, Hauling Ass - started to bang their beaks against the mesh wire. The fluffy mummah froze up at the sight of the giant birds and their hungry growls. I took the opportunity to pinch her nape and dangle her by the scruff. She screeched again, flailing and kicking her tiny hooves around.
“NU! NU FEED FWUFFY TO BEAKY-MUNSTAH!!!”
“What, and let my babies starve? Tell you what. I’ll cut you a deal. I know there are more fluffies in this yard than just you. If you tell me where all the nests are, I’ll let you and your babbehs go.” The fluffy glanced down at my chickens and looked back up at me, nodding rapidly.
“Fwuffy do whatewah hoomin says!! Just nu take babbehs!”
To her shock, I opened the coop, and my voracious little dinosaurs burst out, jumping and snapping at the little fluffy while she screamed and cried. I lifted her up out of their reach, waggling a little finger at them.
“Oh no ladies, this one’s not for you. But she’s going to lead us to some delicious snacks, isn’t she?” The fluffy cried and nodded again, her eyes shut tight.
“Now, lead me to those nests.”
The fluffy opened her eyes and pointed in the direction of my compost bin.
“Poopy fwuffy lib there.” How comically fitting. I walked over and opened the bin, and sure enough, there was a brown mare, a stallion, and a nest of squirming little chirpies nestled and blended almost perfectly into the compost pile, alongside chicken shit-caked pine shavings and rotting fruit. For a second, a couple ideas ran through my head - fluffies are little shit machines, maybe they’d be useful for the compost pile. But I had a point to make.
I dangled the fuchsia fluffy over the pile. The brown fluffies looked up at her, bewildered, until they caught the site of my chickens rushing into the box, having spotted a group of easier prey.
“WUN POOPY FWUFFIES! WUN! BEAKY-MUNSTAHS COMIWNG!”
Bertha and Poundcake went straight for the chirpies, pecking rapidly at the humus until they gripped the squirming little rat in their beaks. Having grabbed one, Bertha started to run to a corner to enjoy her meal, but Poundcake attempted a theft. The poor little chirpie was torn asunder, its back legs being yanked into Poundcake’s beak, before its halves disappeared into both of the hen’s gullets. There was a tiny cry, and then nothing.
The fluffy parents shrieked, the stallion attempting to slam his little hooves into Minnie’s legs. It wasn’t very effective.
Minnie, the more oblivious of the bunch, cocked her head and took a minute to process the small creature batting at her leg, before promptly swinging down and snapping the stallion’s leg off in one fell swoop. He tumbled back with a cry, blood shooting everywhere (great source of nutrients for my compost though) and Minnie went in for another attack, chomping off an arm. Strep Throat promptly came running and slammed her beak straight into his chest, pulling back a stringy bunch of organs with it. The two chickens proceeded to tear him into an unrecognizable mass, quickly vanishing into their crops.
The mare of the pair was frozen in the corner, eyes streaming down her cheeks, watching Bertha and Poundcake unceremoniously pluck up her babbehs like little bits of pellet feed. She only turned her head to see Hauling Ass, one of the biggest roosters I have ever owned, looming over her like a mighty behemoth. Before she could plead or make the tiniest peep, he grabbed her by the neck and flung her into his mouth, gobbling her whole.
The fuchsia fluffy was stunned. The chickens finished feeding, clucking contently, but their attention was immediately drawn again to the tasty morsel in my hand.
“Good job, fluffy. Now onto the next nest.”
She didn’t say another word, and simply pointed in the direction of the second nest, hidden behind my shed. And the third, underneath the grill. The fourth, under a bunch of scrap wood. And the fifth, in a patch of wildflowers. Each time she watched, shell-shocked, as my chickens ravaged the nests. Many of the microfluffs had started to panic hearing the earlier commotion and tried to escape, only having gotten a few feet away from their nests before my little dinosaurs descended upon them. A couple parents looked up at the fuchsia fluff, asking why she “betwayed” them, calling her a “fwuffy munstah,” and she simply remained silent in my hands, watching her friends (or extended family or whatever, I’m not sure how that works) vanish down the throats of the beaky-munstahs.
And finally, we returned to her nest. I walked briskly to it, my chickens not far behind, but lagging slightly from their full meal.
“Good job there fluffy mummah. Well, it’s time for you and your babbehs to go too.”
The fluffy gasped and shrieked.
“Nu! NU! Hoomin pwomised! PWOMISED! Let fwuffy an babbehs go! Nao!!! Hoomin PWOMISED! HUUHUUHUU!” She bawled, looking down at her chirpies, which had grown louder in her absence, helplessly wondering where their mummah and milkies were.
“I didn’t promise shit. If I let you and your babies go, you’ll just keep breeding and keep eating all of the plants here. You don’t belong here. You’re an invasive species, and I have a duty to protect my environment. You’re gonna become chicken food, and then you’re gonna become fertilizer.”
“NUU! NUU! FWUFFY BE GOOD! F-fwuffy no attack pwants! Fwuffy onwy eat…fwuffy onwy eat buggies! Fwuffy feed babbehs buggies! Fwuffy no eat wiwd sketti! Pwomise! Pwomise!”
“Nice try. You shitrats are too fucking lazy to try and catch a bug. Goodbye.”
I dropped her onto the grass, alongside her babies. She tried to gather them as fast as she could, but it was far too late. As she tried to pull a babbeh towards her, Hauling Ass clamped down his entire beak around her back, snapping her spine in half. She went limp, and her gaze never left the sight of her babies until she vanished down his gullet.
My chickens took their time on the last nest, pecking lazily at the babies whose eyes weren’t even open yet. They simply squealed and chirped, feeling the cold air envelop them, scrambling pathetically for a warmth that was no longer there. The lazy pecks lacerated their backs and legs, and they cried as they were swallowed whole or torn into tiny bloody pieces. Brief, meaningless lives.
I sighed, satisfied. Sure, it was a little painful, but hey - such is the life of selflessly protecting the environment.