Too Much of a Good Thing The scent of oven-fresh chocolate chip became even more unbearable and Ben thumbed a few more shells into the faux-walnut stock of his shotgun. "Fence-post," Mei noted lazily, eyes recovering to an ad for fashionable scarves in her department store catalog. "I see him." Ben pumped the handle, took momentary aim, and easily blasted the snuggle into a fine spray of crimson, cuddly fluff, and the giggling cadence of children's laughter. The gnarled four by four of the back fence took the bottom margin of the cloud of lead and surrendered a few more chips of cedar to the sultry night air. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. "Do you think I'd look good in this?" Snuggles. Understandable that science fiction unanimously predicted the evils of genetic engineering manifested in savage reptiles, goose-stepping clone armies, and space alien hybrids of every description, yet hilarious how far they'd fallen from the mark. "You look good in anything, kid." Ben used one boot to slide the softly flickering durian candle in it's dented tin dish a little closer to the couple before returning both to the porch rail and reaching for a smoke. Cookies. The smell was worse than usual tonight, aggrivated by the summer heat no doubt. Ben wasn't so old to have forgotten a time when he could stomach that stench -- a time, perhaps, when he even enjoyed it -- but that was long ago now and for the past decade at least, he, Mei, Raj and Susan next door, the Jamesons down the street, and everyone else in Abilene, Texas (not to mention an encompassing swath of the southern United States and Mexico) could barely smell anything else. All thanks to the whimsical predilictions of some fucknut nerd at the Department of Aggriculture tasked with that particularly odious feature of snuggle design. Ben reflected that if he only knew the name of said guy or any of his pals from that ill-fated project, the next box of shells he bought might carry him from hunting liscence violation to homicide, but he didn't. No one did. What was done had been done, and stringing some egg-heads up for it would only provide an ephemeral wash of vindictive satisfaction. It would certainly do nothing to abate the snuggle hoardes. "I like the cut, but I'm not sure if the color's right." "Which one are you looking at?" "This one." "Hmm." "It might be a little over the top." The truly irritating yet inescapable fact was that what had been done was done for all the right reasons. An earnest, selfless endevor to advance the greater good. A harmless bid to synthesize an animal with no sharp edges and a full report of beneficial features. A crop-friendly rodent with an appetite for aphids, garden weeds, and coffee grounds that shit sunshine in the form of chemically-perfected fertilizer and smelled like Christmas eve at grandma's. A six pound saccrine amalgam of rabbit and squirrel with saucer-sized coal-black eyes and a gum eraser nose that sold itself in one warm heart beat to even the most cynical detractors of the recession-era government program. Good thing they saw fit to introduce them in a small area to begin with. Tragic for Ben that it happened to be his hometown. "Don't you already have something like that?" "Similar, but it's heavier fabric. Not the kind of thing you'd wear in the summer. Especially as hot as it is this year. Oh, tree-stump, sugar." With not one of god's creatures heartless enough to actually eat the little fuckers, Sciuridae-G (or "snuggles" as the smitten public more or less instantly dubbed them) quintupled their population in a month and the corn, cotton, and grain belts in that order found thelmselves up to their repective asses in the irresistable rats by New Years -- with stars still fading in their eyes, a coo caught in their throats, chemically-perfected fertilizer already about knee-deep, and aphids barreling toward extinction at a speed unheard of in history. Ben pumped an empty cartridge out of the chamber and moved his Camel to the side of his mouth. The rest, unfortunately, -was- history and in the sleepy town of Abilene, Texas, the reek of chocolate chunk cookies was detectable from low orbit as Ben sighted down the cool steel of his shotgun and gently caressed the trigger. A pink-nosed snuggle seated adorably atop the remains of the Fentons' ancient apple tree one yard over evaporated in a scarlet gust of biology and buckshot and splinters of wood and soil danced off together to the sound of laughing toddlers. Mei stretched indulgently in the silvery star light, hoisting the catalog above her head and arching her back seductively against the worn oak slats of her adirondack chair. "I like this one, honey; I think it's cute. I've really got half a mind to buy it."