Part 4
Industrial chicken farms were pretty horrible by anyone’s standards. There were usually thousands of chickens stuck in huge, long buildings just eating as much as they could and crapping everywhere they walked. What waited inside the huge steel barn was nothing of the sort.
There were only a few hundred creatures in here, but they weren’t chickens. They looked like chickens, but the huge eyes, babbled clucking, and vibrant rainbow of colors betrayed that these creatures were anything but chickens. Mike looked at them for a minute, then to the camera, then back at the creatures.
“Mary, I’ve seen some weird stuff in my life,” said Mike. “But this is way up there. What the heck are these things?” She picked up one of the creatures and held it up to the camera.
It was an electric green orb the size of a chicken with fluff instead of feathers. It had two wings like a chicken, but eyes like a fluffy. Its blue legs and beak looked like they were rubbery rather than hard. It sort of smiled with the beak.
“Hewwo nu fwiend!”
“What in the world are you?” asked Mike.
“Am chi-kun!” it giggled. “Wan eggies? Chi-kun gif nu fwiend eggies?” Mike looked at Mary, then back to the creature. Mary smiled and put the fluffy chi-kun back down.
“Back when Hasbio was a company,” Mary explained, “and before the PETA breakout, there was a German genetic company that stole a bunch of the gene sequences for fluffy ponies in order to make the puffy griffons.” She gestured to the clucking and babbling sea of fluffy chi-kuns. “What you have here is the prototype of the puffy griffon. My father sent me a bunch of eggs to see what I could make of them and I’m proud to say we have the only chi-kun ranch in the United States.” Mike regarded the weird creatures for a moment.
“You ever deep fry one of these things?”
“CUT!” yelled the producer. “Jesus, Mike. Remember the audience. Fluffy ponies and their families.”
“I gotta change batteries anyway,” said the cameraman, dropping the camera down for maintenance.
“They’re so good deep fried,” said Mary under her breath. “I need them for the eggs, but holy crap, they’re delicious.” Mike nodded approvingly before the camera came up again.
“Okay,” said the producer. “We rolling again, Josh? Good.”
“So you got these weird German Fluffy chickens,” said Mike.
“Chi-Kuns,” Mary corrected. “The American Poultry Council is an ever bigger bunch of assholes than the dairy lobbyists,” said Mary. She paused and grimaced at the camera. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said the producer. “We’ll just bleep that out if we decide to use it.”
“Anyway,” Mary continued, “So chi-kuns give ‘eggies’ and they’re happy to do so. They usually lay two a day, so we keep about a two hundred and twenty on hand at any time. They’re all female, except for the five ‘woostehs’ we keep.”
“Does it ever make your brain hurt to talk like a fluffy all the time?” asked Mike.
“Once you start dreaming in fluffspeak, it’s all downhill from there,” said Mary. “Let me show you the collection mechanism. It’s pretty standard, as far as egg collectors go, but the eggs are slightly larger than chicken eggs.” She walked over to a quiet conveyer belt and picked up what looked like a polka dotted Easter egg. Mike looked at it in disbelief
“Easter Bunny’s got nothing on these guys,” he said. ”So you collect the eggs, and use them in…”
“Everywhere,” said Mary. “The cweamewy, the restaurant, the bakery. The fat content is a little higher than most eggs, but so is the miwk, so it balances out.”
“So why isn’t aren’t these guys more popular?” asked Mike. A flock had gathered around him, hopping up and down, begging him to take some “eggies.” “They certainly seem friendly.”
“They’re even dumber than fluffies,” said Mary with a sigh. “We literally can’t have standing water in here or they’ll drown. You know the myth of turkeys drowning in the rain? Legit happens with these ladies. Their vocabulary is more limited than a fluffies and they’re super fragile. But the worst part are the males…”
“WET WOOSTEH OUT!” shrieked a voice from the corner, followed by loud pounding on a metal door. “WAN CHI-KUN HAVE SPEHCAW HUGGIES! WET OUT, WET OUT, WET OUT!”
“Every single woosteh is a smarty of the worst kind,” she finished. “They are such massive jerks that if I could figure out how to artificial inseminate the females, I would take them all to the farm upstate.”
“WOOSTEH HEAH DUMMEH MUMMAH OUT DEH!” the voice shrieked again. “WEH OUT OW GIF BIGGEST OWIES!” this was followed by repeated banging on the metal door.
“SHU UP!” yelled a voice from the other metal cage. “WOOSTEH TWY SWEEPIN!”
“YU SHU UP!” yelled another voice.
“We should go,” said Mary as the chorus of angry sing song voices reached a crescendo. “They’re going to yell themselves hoarse, then shut up for a few hours till something else upsets them. They’re really the worst part of the job.”
They left the chi-kun shack and walked along the gravel path towards a larger, more industrial building. Outside, pipes flowing from the milking barn into the heart of the building while a refrigerator truck sat idling at the docks. As they approached closer, the occupant in the front seat became clearer. It was a red earthie with an orange mane sitting in the driver’s seat with his hooves on the steering wheel.
“Please tell me you don’t let fluffies drive,” said Mike.
“Of course not,” said Mary. “Could you turn off that camera for a minute? I need to go have words with an employee.” She left Mike and the crew behind as she stalked to the other side of the waiting truck. The words that came from her were nothing they could have put on the air anyway, and were loud enough that the fluffy mares standing in the nearby fields looked over to see what was happening. The threats she made against the unseen person, then the fluffy, were unbelievably graphic and anatomically improbable at best. The fluffy pretending to drive quailed at her passing and covered his head with his hooves. She rejoined the crew a moment later, her face recomposed into her normal smile.
“Outside fluffies are not allowed in the farm area,” she said calmly. “So I don’t know why Charlie thought it was okay to bring his intact male onto my farm. Let’s continue.” They walked past the truck where the fluffy was sobbing in the passenger seat.
“Nu wan spechaw wumps in poopie pwace, hu hu hu.”
The driver also kept his head down, trying very much to avoid Mary’s gaze. They walked past the truck, where a giant of a man loaded the last crates into the truck. The door of the truck rattled shut and with two thumps on the side, the truck drove off for parts unknown.
“This is Jeb, overseer of the warehouse,” said Mary. Jeb simply grunted and walked away. “He doesn’t talk much. But through these doors is where all the miwk comes to be processed. First trip is filtering, where the miwk is screened one last time for stray fluff and anything else that might affect the quality of the final product.”
Gallons of miwk poured through a series of fine screens in large glass vessels before coming to rest in another large metal canister. From there it pumped into two streams, one labeled “Pasteurization”, the other “Raw Miwk.” Mike paused and pointed at the sign.
“You sell raw miwk?” he asked. “Isn’t that illegal in the US?”
“Very good, Mike! Raw milk IS illegal in the United states,” said Mary. “But we’re not selling milk, are we?”
“No, I suppose we’re not,” said Mike with a nod. “So you not only get the weirdos who want fluffy miwk, you get the raw milk weirdos too.”
“Now you’re catching on,” said Mary. “We use slow pasteurization to preserve the flavor of Miwk, but it does lose some of the subtle flavors that come from the high quality feed.” She pointed to a room with a massive plexiglass window separating it from the hallway, but allowing easy viewing. “Either way, we make soft cheeses in this room here.”
The room glittered with sterile stainless steel and smelled of fresh creamy miwk. Two workers in full bunny suits stood over an oval vat of miwk, carefully stirring and testing every minute or so with long probes. One of them walked over and grabbed a carton off another steel shelf and began pouring it into the vat of miwk.
“So what’s she adding?” asked Mike.
“Rennet,” said Mary. “It’s an enzyme that helps coagulate the miwk proteins. Because we use one hundred percent natural ingredients, we always use real rennet.”
It took Mike a minute to remember what rennet was.
“…and where do you get that?” he asked.
“The farm upstate,” said Mary. “Usually the black bin foals.”
“Anything more pleasant we can see?” he asked.
“How about some ice cweam?” asked Mary. “Everyone loves ice cweam.”
They walked from the cheese room towards a sealed door. Along the wall hung dozens of coats of various sizes, each white and bearing a picture of a happy fluffy sitting down, eating an ice cream cone on the back. The crew donned the coats, then hair and beard nets before stepping into a room colder then they’d ever been in before. Frost formed at the edge of Mary’s glasses, and the cameraman wiped moisture away from the viewfinder before it frost.
“Here’s where we make our world famous Fwuffy Ice Cweam,” said Mary. “We use all natural flavors and ingredients and the French pot method to get the finest quality of ice cweam. The fat content of miwk is much higher than milk and additional proteins give it a lower freezing point. We use liquid nitrogen to cool the vessels, as well as keeping the room a balmy zero degrees Fahrenheit.”
From the sterile machinery to the racks of frozen French fries, a fine rime covered everything in the room. An eerie silence hung in the air after having traveled through several hours of babbling fluffies and whirring machinery. It was a nice change, despite the freezing temperatures.
On one side of the room, a triple layer of glass separated the ice cream production from the bottling a room away. The machines were smaller than some of the places Mike had seen, but still ran with the sewing machine precision that he expected from any commercial operation. Everything glittered with signs careful maintenance and sterile efficiency. Beyond the bottling room, another window peered into the restaurant and store.
“You’re probably wondering why so much glass,” said Mary.
“The thought had occurred to me,” said Mike.
“Let’s head into the restaurant and I’ll show you.”
The walked out of the freeze room, leaving behind their coats and hair nets on the pegs. As they walked through the bottling plant, they finally came through a pair of security doors. Mike looked around for a moment, before realizing something.
“So I’ve noticed you’ve got pairs of doors everywhere here,” said Mike.
“Keeps the fluffies out,” said Mary, as she opened the door to the restaurant store front where children, families, happy couples, and their fluffies all enjoyed tasty treats. Fluffies babbled happily, begging for “ice cweams,” “cheesies!” and “sweet nummies.” Bored teenagers worked the counter, putting on their best fake smiles for customers while the clatter of a kitchen echoed in from another room. Mary spread out her arms and gestured to the happy scene.
“This is why I started Fwuffy Fawms Cweamawy,” said Mary. “I love seeing all these people enjoying what I’ve made. It makes me feel like Willy Wonka in a way. The Gene Wilder version, not the Johnny Depp.” She pointed to a glass walled refrigerator room. “We keep everything a foot off the floor and most of the walls glass so that fluffies can’t escape and hide. Rather than traipsing tours through the manufacturing areas, the huge windows allow visitors to see the inner workings of the cweamwy while keeping their fluffies safe and sound.”
“I thought you said fluffies aren’t allowed on the property?” said Mike.
“We’re not on the farm anymore,” said Mary. “Out here is Fwuffy Fawms Famawy Fun Center.” She paused, and shook her head. “Family Fun Center. I gotta start spending more time around other people and less time around fluffies."