Indianapolis is home to many small fluffy clans and herds throughout their walkable downtown. Most folks don’t mind them, city fluffies learned not to be too annoying a long time ago. Those who don’t, die. As a result, the disgusting consequences of long term fluffy habitation don’t get near as bad around these parts. People and fluffies can live side by side.
But some people have different goals. Different demands of these fragile dopey nonentities.
It’s noon. Herds are out gathering food, and their nests are being tended by nurse mares. Seizing the opportunity, a shifty looking young man is walking around downtown with a large bucket full of foals. The lid has holes for air, and it’s big enough that they aren’t super audible from the outside.
He walks down an alleyway, his fifth today. With his air filtration mask and steel toed boots, he makes a beeline for the babbehs. The four nurse mares put up as much of a fight as they could, but it wasn’t enough. Each was dispatched by a single kick to the skull. Then he scooped up the babbehs as quickly as he could.
It had been like this all day. Nobody gave a damn, but he kept it up for hours. All around downtown, herds would be returning to find their nursemaids dead and their children gone.
…
It’s dusk in Eagle Creek Park. The large herd that lives there is due back any minute now. The ten nurse mares watching over the flock of babbehs have an easy life. The park is peaceful, people are friendly, and there’s enough food. Nobody can stuff their faces, but nobody goes hungry either.
The foals, for their part, are playing a variety of games. There’s easily 150 babbehs here, so they cover most permutations of most games fluffies know.
A noise! A man steps out of the brush. One of the nurse mares approaches him, but by the time she hears the peeping from the bucket it’s too late. He pops the lid off, stands over the small gulley the babbehs had been corraled into, and dumped the entire bucket.
Dozens of babbehs poured out in various states of neglect. The bottom had a lot of dead and dying foals mixed in with the exhausted and crushed ones. But throughout the bucket, foals had been coated in fear vomit and fluffy shit. It smelled awful.
Having dumped a large number of intact living fluffies, a federal crime, the man discarded his bucket and fled the scene. He’d be back another day.
…
“Smawty! Hewp! Wotsa nyu babbehs!”
The Smarty wrinkles his nose trying to come up with an explanation. Failing, he goes to see for himself. The nursery is twice as full as when he’d left. It was as though every babbeh had split into two. The nurses were panicking, and the herd could hear a wailing and a screeching from the babbehs they’d not heard in years.
Hunger.
The nurses did what they could, but by the end of the night all the day’s food was GONE. Babbehs were still hungry but there just wasn’t enough. Most of the big fluffies didn’t even eat.
…
It’s been a month. The herd is destabilizing fast. They’re able to take on new members, but the sudden doubling of their most resource intensive and least productive population has brought the herd to the brink of collapse. To make matters worse, the huge numbers of babbehs make it hard to figure out whose is whose. Babbehs are largely unhelpful and will agree to go with any fluffy claiming to be mummah or daddeh, and the parents aren’t able to remember which of the now eight yellow wingy colts is theirs. They aren’t smart, and this is tough for some humans.
The Smarty hopes they can sort this out. Maybe they’ll get lucky and find nummies soon?
…
Three months have passed. The Eagle Creek Park herd is gone. Most of them died, either from petty infighting or starvation. They couldn’t gather enough food during a given day to feed everyone, and when it came time to distribute the limited food, violence broke out between disagreeing parties.
The sudden influx of foals had been a disaster. It had done something teenagers and edgy sad adults had tried and failed for years to accomplish. It took a self sufficient herd that had found balance with the environment and made it implode.