Bored, you flip through channels on the tv. You’re not looking forward to Monday, when you go back to work. But when you’re not working, you really have nothing to do. Such is life.
Is this news, or a documentary? These days, it’s hard to tell. Seems to be a report on fluffies throughout Asia. In Japan, fluffies are highly prized luxury pets; they show a woman showing off her white mare with metallic sky-blue tail and mane, her hooves decorated with bejeweled bangles and a matching tiara perched on her head. Japanese law heavily restricts fluffy ownership, requiring you to have a safe room with certain specific dimensions and accessories, licensing, and requiring all fluffies to be spayed or neutered unless you’re a licensed breeder subject to regular inspections and containment procedures. So far, this has had the effect of preventing the feral fluffy problem affecting all of North America, as well as keeping fluffies a high-value item that only the rich or obsessed can afford, like they were in the US before garage breeders and ferals took off. Oh, now there’s an interesting trend: some Japanese breeders are trying to breed a ‘manlier’ fluffy. They look like little Greek or Roman war horses, with their manes standing up in a crest like a mohawk; bigger, stronger, longer-legged, and more intelligent than the average fluffy. A black stallion with white and black striped mane and tail looks into the camera and clearly enunciates, “Domo arigato, Mister Roboto.” The hell? It wasn’t just pronouncing its r’s, it was rolling them! That was crazy. It also seems vaguely familiar somehow.
In South Korea, fluffies weren’t just pets, they were also popular for fur coats. A woman danced around in front of the camera, showing off her rainbow-patterned full-length fur coat. Unlike Japan, the Koreans had the beginnings of a feral fluffy problem as well. They seemed to be solving this by eating any that didn’t seem to make good pets, or stampeding them into mine fields along the border to clear them. The camera cuts from a running, panicking herd to the laughing soldiers as a chain of explosions goes off like firecrackers. The North Koreans, of course, have declared fluffy ponies to be a capitalist plot and open fire with machine guns and mortars any time something brightly colored and fuzzy miraculously manages to make it through the razor wire, mine fields, and booby traps littering the border.
China, of course, treats fluffies in the typical Chinese approach to animal rights. The camera doesn’t cut away as it shows a flatbed truck piled high with wooden crates, each packed with so many fluffies that the wailing, sobbing animals can’t even move. The fluffies in the bottom crates are completely covered in shit from the fluffies in the crates above them, many of them suffocating as a result. The Chinese workers callously hose them down, dead or alive, skin the shrieking, begging animals alive, and toss the thrashing, skinless ponies into boiling water to be made into dumplings. Other fluffies are kept in crush cages, metal tubes going through their skin and into their gall bladders to milk them for bile. You saw a news report on them doing this to bears once; now fluffies are so numerous that they’re starting to replace the bears the Chinese have been driving extinct for their traditional medicine.
You turn the tv off and are about to call your girlfriend to see if she wants to do anything, when you hear high-pitched wailing coming from the safe room. Expecting the worst, you run to the safe room and find…
Sunshine, your badly-scarred yellow-and-orange fluffy is staring in horror as Midnight, the brand new dark bluish-purple pegasus foal you brought home on Friday, takes a tiny baby shit in the middle of the floor.
“NUUUUUU! BABBEH NU MAKE BAD POOPIESH! NUUUUU!”
Sunshine wails miserably and tries to hide her face behind her hooves as the little foal grunts, then finishes and toddles off to investigate the shiny ball that makes jingle noises when it rolls. You sigh in irritation and step into the room to clean up the mess. Sunshine notices you for the first time and has a full-blown panic attack.
“NUUUU! SHUNSHINE AM SOWWY! NU MAKE BAD POOPIESH! BIWW NU HUWT SHUNSHINE! BIWW NU HUWT BABBEH! SHUNSHINE CWEAN!”
She’s slurring her words worse than usual, which is typical for when she’s truly distraught. She runs for the little pile of turds as quickly as her stubby legs will carry her and you know instantly that if you don’t stop her, she’s going to eat it; one of the abuses her previous owner put her through was making her eat her own shit every time she had an accident or made scaredy poopies, and it took you a while to break her of the habit when you first got her. With much less stress in her life, she had far fewer accidents now, and she didn’t eat it. Now, however…
“Sunshine, no!” You try not to raise your voice or sound mean, trying to avoid upsetting her further. “It’s ok, don’t touch it!”
She flinches back and huddles in a fetal position, trembling.
“Shunshine sowwy! Nu wan bad poopiesh! Twy teww babbeh nu make bad poopiesh, bu babbeh nu lishen!”
Squatting down to her level, you pet her gently and she winces in anticipation of impending injury.
“It’s ok, Sunshine. You didn’t do anything bad; you’re a good fluffy. And Midnight is just a baby; he doesn’t know where he needs to make poopy yet.”
“Midnight am good babbeh? Nu huwt Midnigh?”
“That’s right, no hurt Midnight. No hurt Sunshine either; you’re a good fluffy.”
“Shunshine am good fwuffy?”
“Yes. Now, Midnight is just a baby and he doesn’t know he needs to make poopies in the litter box. Can you help me teach Midnight to make good poopies?”
You can practically hear the gears grinding in her feeble, abused mind as she processes all of this, then finally nods.
“Good girl. Let’s start by teaching him about bad poopies.”
You snag the little foal, not quite old enough to actively run yet, and hold his face to the little pile of turds he produced. Sunshine winces, but seems to notice you’re not actually shoving the baby’s face into the shit itself.
“Midnight, this is bad poopy! Don’t make bad poopies!”
The little foal cheeped and flapped its wings and tried to backpedal away from the poop, but couldn’t go anywhere with your hand on it.
“When you need to make poopies, you go in litter box! Sunshine, show him the litter box.”
Sunshine practically flies to the litter box and you place Midnight in there with her.
“This is where you make poopies, understand?”
The older fluffy then proceeds to empty her bowls into the litter box; you’re not sure if she’s demonstrating or just couldn’t hold her scaredy poopies any longer. Either way, it serves as an example. You make sure Midnight is watching as you pet her and praise her for making good poopies, then pick him up and stick his face in the turds again and tell him these are bad poopies. You stick him back in the litter box and he immediately squats down, grunts, and strains, but nothing comes out. Failing to produce good poopies, you pet him and praise him anyway and let him stumble off back to the pillow bed while you clean up his mess.
“Sunshine, when Midnight needs to make poopies, you show him where the litter box is, ok?”
She nods, still cowering slightly. You pat her on the head again and remind her what a good fluffy she is, and she eventually wanders off to join Midnight on the pillow, not entirely sure of herself. You sigh as you close the safe room door and head into the kitchen to wash your hands; you were hoping having another fluffy around would lessen her anxiety, not increase it, but it seems that until Midnight learns proper behavior he’s just going to cause her more distress. Your poor, abused fluffy has gotten over a lot of her emotional issues by coping with routine and lots of praise and good treatment, and now the baby is disrupting her fragile little world. You frown as the thought occurs to you that she might respond to Midnight being “bad” by physically abusing him herself; she hasn’t shown any inclination to do so thus far, but it is a possibility. Maybe you should give the vet a call and ask about that.
Coincidentally, your phone rings just then.
“Hello?”
“Hello, may I speak to Bill?”
“Speaking.”
“Ah, you would be the fluffy pest control expert from the classifieds?”
“Yes.” Since he called your number and asked for you by name, wouldn’t that be confirmation enough that you had the right Bill?
“I’m John Freeman, you have heard of me?”
“Doesn’t ring any bells. Do you have a fluffy problem you need taken care of?”
“Not exactly. I don’t need any fluffies removed from my property, I want you to put them there.”
“Come again?” This isn’t another one of those sickos who wants you round up fluffies and put them on some fenced in land so he can pretend to be a big game hunter again, is it?
“I’ve started a new business for myself and it involves quite a lot of fluffies. Unfortunately, in the quantities I need them in, they start getting cost prohibitive. I was hoping to hire some fluffy removal experts and pay them to bring me entire feral herds if they could, but none of the ones I’ve tried so far were interested. The last fellow I spoke to was… stomping foals and sodomizing their mother with a weedwhacker. While we spoke on the phone. And I’m pretty sure he was touching himself.”
“Ah, you spoke to Larry then.”
“Rather. In any case, I’d like to discuss this in person, maybe let you see my operation for yourself and decide if you want to participate in my little business venture?”
You have a strict no-working-on-weekends policy, but what the hell; you’re bored.
“Sure, what’s the address?”
You write it down, politely end the call, and stick your head in the safe room.
“Sunshine, I need to go somewhere. I’ll be gone for a while. Be a good fluffy while I’m gone, ok?”
“Otay.”
She’s been giving Midnight a bath; his mane is sticking out in all directions and the little foal is trying to wriggle away from her as she resumes licking his fluff. You check the water bottle and food bowl to be sure both are full, consider that Midnight can’t eat solid foods yet, and hurriedly ready some formula and the plastic syringe so you can feed him before you leave.
Half an hour later, you pull up to what looks like a farm, or maybe a military barracks. You smack your fist against the dashboard of your Bronco to make the CHECK ENGINE light go out and kill the engine. A man in his early 40’s walks up to greet you.
“Oh, I recognize you now! You’re the guy who did that quantum mechanics thing!”
“That’s me! Unfortunately, being a math whiz doesn’t pay much, so I decided to start my own business on the side.”
“Doing, what, exactly?”
“Come on and I’ll show you,” he says, waving over his shoulder for you to follow as he heads off to the barracks-looking buildings.
There’s a tall chainlink fence completely surrounding a lush meadow; you notice the bottom of the fence is enclosed by multiple layers of chicken wire and window screening. Not even a rabbit or baby fluffy could get out. Inside the enclosure are half a dozen wooden buildings on stilts, all with ramps leading to doggy doors on the ends. Rounding the fance and coming to the front of the first building, Freeman opens the gate to let you in, shutting it behind him. A few dozen yards away, a big herd of fluffies is chasing a ball across the field or grazing.
"The field has a blend of different grasses growing in it and is watered on an automatic timer every morning. We feed the fluffies a balanced diet, making sure they get the fiber and nutrition they need. Every Sunday is spaghetti night. C’mon, let’s look inside.
Unlocking a seldom-used door on the side of one building, he lets you inside. Your impress of a barracks was an accurate one; the wooden building is full of individual stalls, each one occupied by a fluffy bed typical of those sold in pet stores. Some are occupied, mostly by pregnant dams or nursing mommahs. One end of the building is an open space with a lot of blankets everywhere, and a fluff pile of napping fluffies in the center.
“The buildings give the fluffies a place to sleep and rest; lighting is provided by windows and solar tubes in the ceiling, it’s all natural. Each stall has a night light installed with a switch the fluffy can operate, so it can sleep in the dark or have a light on, whichever it prefers. Everything is climate-controlled, so they have a cool place to rest in the summer, and a warm place to sleep in the winter. There’s the open area for more sociable fluffies, and for the nursing mothers who don’t want their babies getting squished or crowded, we have the individual stalls. A few of the abused fluffies we bought from rescue centers also prefer the privacy of a stall and enjoy having their own beds.”
Leading you back outside, he gestures to a fluffy walking up the ramp and passing through the doggy door to enter the barracks you just left.
“We give them plenty of stimulation and exercise, you’ll notice that in addition to large, open spaces for them to run and graze in, we also have a play area with balls, blocks, and other toys to keep them busy. They’re all very happy here.”
None of the fluffies seem to be paying any attention to you, but they are all having lots of fun playing, napping, grazing, or in the case of one couple, mating.
“I’ve only got fifty or so fluffies here right now, but I’ve got space and resources to support ten times that many. That’s where you come in; they’re not breeding quickly enough to fill up the place, so I need someone to bring a feral herd now and then boost my numbers.”
“What exactly are you doing with them all?”
“Glad you asked,” he replies, smiling easily. “Inside each barracks is a ‘poopy place’ for the fluffies. Each morning, my employees gather the dung and it’s processed by a methane plant for fuel to provide electricity, and what’s left is turned into very effective fertilizer and sold to local farms and ranches. We also shear the fluffies throughout the summer to help them keep cool, and the fluff is carded, spun into yarn, and sold to fabric stores in town. If the operation gets big enough, I’d really like to expand into a while line of clothing and blankets made of fluffy fur. But I need more fluffies; the more, the merrier. Mares, stallions, foals, dams, all are welcome. So long as they aren’t infected with some disease that could spread to the others, or so lame and maimed they can’t function normally, we’ll take them. The only exception is smarties; we tried letting them keep a smarty friend or two to lead the herd, so to speak, but they ended up causing nothing but trouble. So no smarties, and no seriously ill or crippled fluffies. Anything else is fine. If you can capture or corral an entire herd, I’ll send some employees down with a truck to pick them all up and pay you a generous bounty for every live fluffy you bring me. Sound good?”
You grin; this could be an excellent arrangement with a strong possibility of repeat business, and best of all, you don’t have to kill the poor fluffies you find eating crops and destroying people’s gardens.
“Let’s talk turkey, Mr. Freeman. What sort of generous bounty are we talking about?”
To Be Continued
and very interesting solar powered one too.