"Lots of people like childcare - fewer when it's not spring - but orange is also medicine and therapy and social work and sex work some places, that kind of thing."

"Huh. Horrible springs -?"

"People vary in how desperately they want kids in springtime, from 'gosh a baby would be really really nice, what a nice baby' through 'even though the government will literally rip the kid out of my hands and kill them when they find out, it'd be worth it to hold them just once.'"

"...what the fuck."

"Last one's not common."

"It had better fucking not be!"

"There are just a lot of us."

"And you were horrified to find one on a hillside."

"Tapa kills them quickly."

"I suppose."

"And no one else does it at all. It's really a hard problem, population control."

"If you have a population of crazy animal people. ...I do not mean to insult you, you are my favorite crazy animal person, but this would not be a hard problem if humans could volitionally create babies instead of the thing we do instead. We'd just volitionally create reasonable numbers and not be upset about it."

Sigh. "How would humans do if there was something you wanted, and there was a finite supply of it in the whole world that was enough for everyone to get two, but nothing to stop anyone from instead taking more than that?"

"I mean, if you recast it like that, sure, we'd suck at it, but it's uniquely perverse for the thing to be babies."

"Yeah." Sigh.

Pat pat.

"They're nice when you get 'em! Makes up for all the wanting, really."

"Maybe if we ever get in touch with your world human babies can be raised there, since they'd exist anyway and our population definitely doesn't track yours."

"Maybe! Or some Amentans might settle here even with the perma-springing."

"Ideally the creches would have some or be phased out slowly so we don't have, you know, total cultural dieoff, but sure."

"Oh, yeah, I think they'd do their own city and just take their share of kids, if they did that. - some people'd be better than others but we may as well fantasize about having enough leverage to get something non-horrible."

"Better than others how?"

"At being happy to just settle somewhere presently uninhabited and maintain a nearly-stable population there and respect their neighbors."

"As opposed to steamrolling us."

"Uh huh. It's not likely they'll find a way here, I have no reason to think we're anywhere near home in a non-magic-snake way."