Forest fluffies don’t have easy lives.
Not that any fluffy lives an easy life, mind – the lucky ones that were able to win over doting owners who can afford to put up with them not withstanding. However, a street-stray fluffy can always eek out a meager existence waddling into cast aside boxes and pilfering discarded foods in an alley. Whatever other misfortune befalls it isn’t explicitly caused by its environment, but rather, its intrusion into an environment which does not want to deal with it. And really, this arrangement could not be any other way. Only the fluffies that are desirable end up where they are intended to be, and the vast majority of them… well… don’t. Because they aren’t wanted. Moreover, being unwanted in places designed for people and their pets is just the prerequisite for fluffy misfortune.
A forest fluffy does not have to be concerned about being a pest and nuisance to people, if there are no people around to get upset over its neediness, messiness, and generally child-like shortcomings. Acknowledging that this is the reason for much of the heinous abuses that claim fluffy lives by the bushel every day, one could be led to think that a free range forest feral would be the ideal life for a genetically engineered invasive species.
To do so would be to neglect the fact that the rules of nature are unilateral in their rigidity and, ultimately, uncaring. Yet still, doing so would ignore the manner in which mankind ventures into frontiers zealous and conquering for its pursuits.
Digsite - Inspired by Dino Dino
Life had been an incredible ordeal for this herd of six. There were more when they began their sorrowful exodus from the city in the wake of a malicious maelstrom of a thunderstorm; the flooding had brought the grim specter of the reaper to the forefront of their minds, and they could not bear to remain in the company of the drowned. Yet as with many fluffy ventures, the journey ahead was terribly underestimated, and the numbers whittled.
The distance to cover was but a single hurdle for the fluffies to best. However, fluffies are terrible jumpers, and thusly, a trail of fluffies lost to exhaustion and the elements was left on the concrete shoulder of the highway out of the city. When the sprawl of buildings and roads finally gave way to a space where trees were allowed to grow tall, streams were allowed to flow by their own accord, and the floor was soft soils and grasses, the fluffies had been taught harshly that they would still be persecuted by the natural order even there. The corpses they left behind attracted marauders from the air, and marauders from the dark.
The reek of blood was something the survivors remembered well even though fluffies did not possess good memories, along with the crunch of bone and the wet tearing of flesh, while they tried against all hope to sleep in their piles of comradery. They remembered, not only because these things terrified them, but also because it was a near constant reality for the herd for as long as they had attempted to live as forest fluffies. The herd lost to predation time and time again, and the hunters on the verge of death had the boon to continue living for days and days to come.
Six remained. Most of the hard work was done.
None of the adult fluffies would ever think about such a thing, but the cruel reality was that they were lucky things had transpired this way. Fluffies are not suited to living in the wilderness by any means, but their chimeric origins had instilled within them the baser instinct to hide away and be defended by shelter, when they could not defend themselves. The herd had taken to digging out burrows between the roots of trees soon after they arrived at their new home, and many hooves made the arduous task slightly more manageable.
Slightly. What the fluffies had accomplished was in no way going to support the numbers they had at the beginning of the project, however, they never got around to dealing with their logistics failure due to the rapid downsizing of the available workforce. And so, while the six adults were downtrodden about the loss of their friends for the limited amount of time that they would remember them, they were able to live comfortably in their burrows for a few days.
Naturally, this signaled to the group that it was time to mate.
Because fluffies are fluffies.
Regardless of where they are.
Days turned to weeks, and then the relative quiet of the wood was disturbed by the grating caterwaul of mares plopping their first litters into the world. Every one of the three burrowa was the nest for the newborn foals.
“Huu, buh fwuffy wan’ ta’e nappies!” one of the stallions complained to his partner after he was told by the mare that there was no more room left in their burrow for the both of them to live.
“Den go ta’e nappies ous’side!” she chastised him, before puffing her cheeks. Her cheeping and peeking offspring were her priority. She was lying on her side so that the first, most eager pair, could suckle. Between the especially rotund mare and the bundle of infants at the center of the leaf clump bedding, the stallion had no place to lay his head.
His lips quivered, and he turned away before his family could see him cry. Not that it mattered for much. He was melodramatically sobbing and whining as he clambered out of the burrow – very obviously in distress and sadness.
“‘Peshaw fwend am meanie! Nu wan’ babbehs nu moa’! Babbehs ta’e nestie away, huu huu huu huu!”
Such a statement – the closest thing to fluffy blasphemy, surely – was echoed in the small brains of the two other spurned stallions as well, though they did not openly admit it just yet, unlike their sensitive fellow. Their ears pricked up at the outburst, and they left their own burrows to investigate. The two males found their despondent companion sitting in the middle of the grouping of trees that comprised their home, blubbering inconsolably.
One of the other two gave him a hug.
It did not stop the tears and sobs. It was incredibly confusing and frustrating to the pair. Partly, because hugs were supposed to fix everything, yet despite all their hugs, not one travesty was ever fixed in the course of their endeavor. Overall, the stallions were all in a sour mood.
When nightfall arrived, the trio huddled together at the base of one of their trees, and slept fitfully. This became their nightly routine as their foals grew underground, at the cost of their restful slumbers. When the land grew dark, it was but a question of when they would lose another friend.
In spite of this lackluster arrangement, the stallions all survived long enough to see their children reach adolescence. Though, marring the happy occasion was the unsolved logistics problem from before:
“Go ‘way sissy! Nee’ woom fo’ sweepies!”
“NU! ‘Ou go ‘way! Fwuffy nee’ woom fo’ sweepies moa’!”
The scuffle between this colt and filly was observed by their meeker siblings. Helpless and trembling, they could only be bystanders for the argument as it escalated to the pair flailing their limbs at each other in a desperate bid to win dominance. Ideally their mother would have intervened long before this disagreement came to blows, however, she was already fast asleep. Her children were weaned now, which meant she could finally focus on getting her own rest again.
… Condemning the loser of the squabble, the filly, to being ousted from the nest. As was the emerging trend from the two other burrows, until only the mothers and their fiercest, brattiest children remained underground. Though unfair to a human observer, this was but nature running its course within the hierarchy of this particular herd.
The fluffies adapted to their lot eventually. It was a common sight to see a number of near-adult fluffies and their parents milling around their territory during the day, gathering food and drinking from the nearby waterway. At night, there were seldom any disagreements about who got to partake in the safest sleeping arrangements, except for certain upstarts who wished to usurp those who had established their own rung in the pecking order. This rarely succeeded.
All had reached equilibrium for a span. All of the fluffies had seen all four seasons pass them by while they made their place in the world. Miraculously, despite their in-fighting, the shadow of death was not cast upon them for the longest. But as is the way of the world, that was destined to change. The shifting tide was heralded by the silhouette of a fixed-wing aircraft crossing the sunny sky, visible to the fluffies through the gaps in the treetops.
They all lied down and made themselves small, so as to not be seen by the strange, silent monster. The anomaly disappeared swiftly, and the fluffies promptly resumed their activities of play and foraging, priding themselves on how great they were at hiding. Yet, the aerial ground penetrating radar had gleaned all that the aircraft’s operators had wanted to see.
The operation broke ground.
Fluffies felt the earth rumble. They heard the groan and growl of engines in the dark. The fluffies above ground awoke to spotlights glaring through the brush and bark. “MUNSTAS! MUNSTAS HEWE! WUN 'WAY!” came the assorted cries of the panicked bio-toys. Without order or regard for one another, the herd members relegated to the surface scattered into the night. They threw themselves through the bushes and shoved past one another.
The trundling machines pressed through the thicket, clearing the way with their broad treads. The drivers were scarcely aware that frightened fluffies were being flattened in droves. They could not hear the squeals, pleas, and screams, over the rhythm of their powerful engines.
The mares and the remaining offspring shook in horror and despair. Their nests were strewn and splattered with various forms of waste. Their tiny voices all 'huu huu’ed together. The last sounds they heard aside from the rattling retort of an engine was the snapping timbers of their falling trees when the bulldozers began preparations for the digsite.
Emblazoned on each of the titanic machines was the insignia for InGen.
Their quarry were the ancient remains that had been underneath the fluffies’ hooves, all along.
Hopefully I was able to answer some of these questions.
Thank you, @DinoDino for approving this.
Imma go fuck off again.