This is my first fluffy story, blah blah blah. The idea of experimenting on their behavior and language gave me some brainworms.
“Obviously though, we can’t just raise babies without speech and see what happens,” the professor chuckled, trying to get the discussion in Linguistics 1000 back on the rails.
“What about fluffies?” Bavid, a meathead jock, threw the question out, hitting Dr. Pugh like a lacrosse ball.
That was a good question. A real good question.
As far as he remembered, there were very few attempted linguistic experiments on fluffies. The topic had been talked about at conferences, in a half-joking “if only I had more funding and less of a conscience” way, but he knew of only one published study.
At home Pugh sat there grading papers. He groaned over a particularly abysmal one and checked the name. Of course it was fucking Bavid. He paused at the name, remembering the earlier discussion, and pulled up a search engine.
Bingo, there was the study, cutely named “Habwa Españwo?” It was a fairly straightforward and simple experiment- babies from litters of Spanish speaking fluffies were swapped with babies of English speaking fluffies.
The results showed the swapped babies were able to learn and speak the language of their adopted parents with no complications, following stages similar to human babies. It further showed that after adulthood the swapped fluffies were unable to learn the language of their birth parents.
Interesting stuff, to a biologist at least. And more importantly, it gave Dr. Pugh optimism for his own experiment.
After a lengthy review process, Pugh had no difficulty obtaining his subjects as the university maintained a fluffy colony.
Despite the hesitation to use them in research, they were undeniably useful in the vet med program. Unlike cats and dogs, they could give real-time verbal feedback on comfort, pain, and fear while students practiced techniques for blood draws and injections.
In his lab space he was able to set up three sound-proof kennels. A shitty sample size, but it was what his funding would cover. The lab door had a “Quiet Area! No Talking!” sign on the front and opened to a makeshift airlock with a locker to store electronics. Not even humming was allowed in the lab.
The day arrived when Pugh’s fluffies were delivered- three earthy mares. Now he had to disable their ability to talk. From his preliminary research about fluffy husbandry, he realized that the cheapest and easiest way to raise foals would be to simply have the mothers do it themselves. But, the experiment required them to be unable to talk.
He placed the first mare on the table in front of him.
“Hewwo Mistew Doctow! Chawie weady fow ess-pee-wee-mint!” the soft yellow beamed up at him with warm gold eyes.
Pugh broke eye contact and frowned. With only a detatched grunt he stuck the fluffy’s leg with an iv and waited for her to quickly go under.
He took his scalpel and went to work, carefully moving inside the throat, severing the larynx from the trachea and installing the new air passage into her neck. Once it was done, she was sewn up and handed to a vet student to take her to a recovery room.
Charlie woke up to the sound of beeps and a scratchy throat. It was even worse than it had been that time the whole herd had contracted a flu. It itched and burned and she felt herself getting ready to cough…
Wheeze! She felt a strange sensation as air rushed out of the side of her neck instead of her mouth. She opened her mouth to speak and- nothing. Just strange wheezes from her neck hole and wet smacks in her mouth. She tried to stand up, only to find her legs bound to the bed.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay Charlie,” a familiar vet student stroked her mane. She looked at him with confusion, this was most certainly NOT okay. “You had surgery, and you won’t be able to speak now. But it’s okay! You should recover well, and then… you’ll get to have babies! Isn’t that nice?”
Charlie closed her eyes and sobbed silently. What would it matter if she wouldn’t be able to sing to them or tell them she loved them?
Dr. Pugh walked into the room and the student stood up to talk to him.
“They seem to be taking it hard, but they’re physically all handling it well. I see no reason why they wouldn’t be able to handle a pregnancy after two weeks.”
Pugh nodded. He was slightly disturbed at how eager he was for the next parts of the experiment to begin.
To be continued?