Curiosity Fed The Jackalope
Withania pottered around the garden on her morning rounds, giving a generous dose of water to everything while snipping some shoots here and there, or pulling out a lone weed that had been foolish enough to show itself between her beloved foliage. The sun was bright and energising to her green plant-body. Withania didn’t get much from being a plant-hybrid so far as photosynthesis was concerned, but a sunny day made her more awake and motivated.
The garden itself was quiet, with barely a whisper of the wind to rustle the leaves around her - so her ears pricked as they picked up a distinct patter from somewhere behind her. She glanced around, but saw nothing. Just the colourful bands of flowers and leaves down the aisles of the garden. She shrugged and trotted back to the tap to refill her watering can. It was probably a stray branch falling, or a bird taking flight. After the gurgle and hiss of the watering can abated, Withania heard another sound from the back of the garden, this time a rustle, a crunch - and the slightest, but unmistakable gulp. Withania put the watering can down and crept around the nearest row of shrubs on the tips of her hooves.
Following the faint sound of something munching on her plants, she stole between the aisles, slowly glancing around each corner until she found the perpetrator - a hare! Or a doe? Withania blinked and stood up at her normal height to see properly. The creature was a fairly plump looking jackrabbit, but from the crown of its head grew the antlers of a deer. She’d never seen anything like it. However, it was also devouring her plants.
“Hey!” she shouted suddenly, intending to frighten the creature away. With any luck, she’d spot which direction it escaped in and find whatever hole it had dug under her garden fence. The jack-doe-hare-deer did not scarper. In fact it turned and looked in Withania’s direction without so much as blinking, before leaning into the vegetable plot it was standing in and devouring another carrot in a single bite. One moment there was a big fluffy ploom of carrot, the next, nothing. And the creature gulped, a small bulge vanishing down its small neck.
Withania decided to take matters into her own hooves and boldly walked up to the intruder, which still did not move, and scooping it up under one foreleg. She expected it to buck and bolt, but still, the creature seemed remarkably calm about the situation. Until she started walking to the garden gate. She was intended to unceremoniously toss the thing out of her garden, but just as she reached for the gate latch with her other foreleg, the creature wriggled out from her grasp and bounded back into the centre of the garden.
“Oh so it’s going to be like that huh?” she called back. “Fine. I know a pony who will know what to do about you. If I come back and you’ve eaten something expensive though, I’m taking you to an exotic restaurant!”
Threats made, Withania trotted back into her house and to the hallway where her telephone was. She laboriously opened a phone book filled with short morse code numbers, before tapping a telegraph key on the front of the phone while frowning at the book. The telephone clicked a few times before a somewhat muffled voice emitted from the earpiece - not the one she was expecting.
“Hello! This is the home of Fluttershy!” crackled Princess Twilight’s voice, “We are currently away for the day, but can be contacted at our Canterlot address! Please tap twice to be redirected!”
Withania clicked the telegraph key twice, and the line went silent for a moment, before crackling back to life.
“H-hello?” came the soft voice of Fluttershy, rather quiet over the telephone.
“Ah, hello! This is Withania, from Melba Street, I have a very odd rabbit in my garden - eating my plants - and I’m not sure what to do with it.”
“An odd rabbit? Can you describe it?”
“It’s got antlers. It’s very docile, but it refuses to leave.”
“OH!” replied Fluttershy, suddenly loud and muffled as if she’d just swallowed the microphone, “It’s a Jackalope! Are you sure?”
Withania leaned back from her telephone set in alarm, before replying again. “Yes I’m sure that’s what I saw. So… how do I get rid of it? It’ll eat my garden!”
“Well umm… If you could… keep hold of him for me? I would love to meet him, and I’ll be back in Ponyville later on and I’ll be happy to come and collect him from you? He shouldn’t be any trouble!”
“But it keeps eating everything.”
“Well yes, they’ll eat anything flora. You could feed him weeds and he’ll be happy!”
“Weeds?” said Withania, raising her eyebrows, “Well I could certainly use less of those… okay I’ll do that. Thanks for your help, I’ll see you later?”
“Before sunset!” promised Fluttershy, before hanging up with a click.
Withania trotted back out into the garden just as the Jackalope contentedly swallowed one of her best courgettes whole, eliciting a cry of horror from the gardener. Wasting no more time, she scooped it up once again and carried the thing into her greenhouse, practically throwing it through the door before it could jump out of her hooves again. Next, she swerved around to the corner where a large pile of off-cuts was stacked on top of the compost heap, still reasonably fresh, tossed the topmost onto a small cart, and pulled it back to the greenhouse.
“Right, you,” she said, closing the greenhouse door behind herself. “Here’s a bunch of food you can eat without spoiling my garden, then later on someone who loves you will come and take you off my hooves. We’re going to sit here until she arrives, deal?”
The jackalope looked up at her with expressionless eyes, and then sat down to groom himself without so much as a glance toward the pile of fresh leafy food Withania had brought. The plant pony rolled her eyes and looked around the greenhouse. Everything in here was up at chest-height at least, with the floor occupied only by sacks, crates, and other supplies - so there was no risk to any of her plants now. She picked up a pair of mini-sheers and began to inspect the nursery plants instead. With a bit of luck, she thought, the jackalope would chow down her garden waste and then fall asleep.
As Withania fell back into her calming routine of tending to plants, she ignored her unwanted guest. Although her mind replayed the sight of both the carrot, and then the even larger courgette vanishing in a gulp and a twitch of the jackalope’s nose. And before she had even a second to distract herself, her mind took the vision to places.
“Uh oh,” she muttered under her breath. To punctuate this thought, she felt the tickle of something at her hind leg. She glanced down and saw the Jackalope sniffing at her hocks. They’ll eat anything flora! echoed Fluttershy’s voice in her head.
“What do you want, huh?” she asked the furry critter as it licked the back of her hind leg. She didn’t move, waiting to see what the jackalope would do. It turned its head sideways and gingerly nibbled on her hock. Withania didn’t feel teeth, but the little guy was clearly wondering if this tall walking plant that had been interrupting his feasting all morning was too large or not.
Withania slowly put down her sheers and sat down, before slowly extending her hind legs out in front of her as if she were going to lay on her back. She wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to achieve, but a morbid curiosity was seizing her, wondering if the jackalope could actually eat her.
Sniffing her hooves, the jackalope hesitated before suddenly jutting his head forward, as he had done before, and taking both of Withania’s hooves into his mouth seemingly without effort. She bit her lip, not moving for fear of disturbing the critter. The feeling inside her was strangely nostalgic, dredging up feelings she hadn’t experienced since she was a proper pony, before she got herself turned into a plant-hybrid. Back then she had a guilty obsession with ideas of being eaten, and now seeing this tiny little critter slowly trying to devour her filled her with a raging desire.
“Go on little guy,” she whispered, “If you can… try me...”
The jackalope didn’t need telling, it was already inching up her hind legs in a rhythmic nibbling motion, inches of Withania disappearing into a tiny little gullet. Withania could already feel her hooves filling a little belly, and assumed that the critter would now realise that she was far too big - but instead of stopping, the jackalope stretched. With no visible strain, his little mouth and throat worked up to Withania’s stout thighs while the bulge of her hooves and legs appeared beneath him, wrapped in his brown furry belly.
Not wanting to see him defeated, Withania gently folded her hind legs as he valiantly shuffled his way over her cutie marks, her curvy hips offering no obstruction at all, and her lower body was enveloped within the tight confines of a woodland critter less than a quarter of her size. Her legs were bound in place, compressed into a space that offered no spare padding at all, but the strangely guilty sense of pleasure exceeded her concern of what might happen if the jackalope did fail his endeavour.
The jackalope seemed entirely unphased, and continued his slow quest to devour this huge queen of the garden, his little tongue taking in her sweet flavour, his obscenely stretched throat undulating in waves to pull his body over the barrel of her chest, straddled by her quickly tucked in forelegs. Withania slowly leaned onto her back, now helpless as the jackalope passed her elbows. She wouldn’t be able to escape if she wanted to now, with all her legs pinned in place by the impossibly tight confines of the jackalope. His belly stretched over her entire body, his little legs paddling the air as he sought to push onwards, while his ears and whiskers twitched enthusiastically, hardly believing his good fortune. The very giant that had sought to eject him from his newfound havan had become his main course, and by far the biggest meal he’d ever attempted.
Withania’s head was pushed back slightly as his jaws encircled her neck. She wasn’t the least bit afraid, knowing that her body was expendable and would always regrow. Although she wondered when and where she would awaken. With any luck, she thought, she would be a big enough meal that the rest of her garden would be spared afterwards. A shiver of delight rippled up her body, and as if on cue, the jackalope gulped down her head in one go, tucking her down into his fully stuffed stomach.
The greenhouse fell from two occupants to one, an obscenely stuffed jackalope, stretched out of all proportions by a pony-sized belly that followed the visible curves of somepony trapped inside, compressed almost as if vacuum-sealed, but with no clear definition of whom it might be.
Withania couldn’t move a muscle, her head pushed down against her chest and her legs pinned together tighter than she’d ever experienced. The rapid heartbeat of the critter pulsed in her ears, and the smell of fresh-cut plants, along with her own sweetness filled her senses. She felt the jackalope’s body wobble as he attempted to find some kind of footing - but with a body several times his size crushed into his belly, the jackalope was suspended in mid-air. Immobile, but content. Withania couldn’t help but wallow in her own lewd thoughts of having let herself be devoured not only by some simple animal, but a tiny critter barely bigger than a rabbit. Just another plant from her own garden devoured whole. I’m going to make him so fat… she thought with a grin.
She slowly flexed any muscles she could, feeling the slick walls of the stomach rubbing their enzymes into her skin, listening to the breathing and chirps of satisfaction from her host. It took the jackalope a while to make any progress on her, but as time passed, Withania felt her legs crushing into each other, while her back softened and bent out of shape. Her body slowly began to round out, compacting in on itself. Since Withania didn’t need to breathe air, she had no concerns for the air-tight prison she was in, and remained fully aware as the jackalope’s stomach slowly impregnated her flesh with juices to break her down, until finally she was mushy enough for his legs to squash his belly and touch the ground.
Withania was jostled and shaken into a soup as the jackalope hopped around to find an exit to the greenhouse. But with the door closed, he had nowhere to go, and eventually found rest on top of the pile of waste cuttings Withania had originally brought him to eat. Using the discarded meal as a bed, the jackalope flopped down on his side, and Withania felt a stream of trapped air bubble up through her stewing remains.
It was with the dying rays of the setting sun that Fluttershy slid the greenhouse door open, calling out Withania’s name. The gardener was nowhere to be seen, but Fluttershy saw the promised jackalope lying asleep on a pile of greenery, a fat pudgy belly between his legs.
“Oh, she must’ve gone out and left you here,” she said, bending down to look at the antlered critter, “I’m sure she’ll be grateful when she gets back to see you gone! I hope you didn’t eat too much, you look stuffed, mister Jay! Gosh you’re heavy too!”
Fluttershy picked up her new guest and perched him on her back, ensuring he was well balanced and walked out of the greenhouse. “Withania must’ve fed you very well! We’d better get you home and on a diet right away, with plenty of exercise until you’ve worked off this pudge!”
The jackalope sniffed at her, noting that she was definitely not a plant, but offered no resistance to being carted away. He was still more stuffed than he’d ever felt, feeling no regret, but no desire to eat for at least… well, at least the rest of the day. Withania had seen quite well enough to that.