Chapter 64: Sorry Honey (Fat Fox? II)
Nick's diet continues and Jake does not seem to be providing much moral support.
Nick sighed as he watched the raccoon, who was sitting across the table, was slowly letting a spoonful of honey drip slowly…ever so slowly…down upon his stack of flapjacks. The sweet gooey yellow strand of goodness finally just reached its intended target before the fox grumbled out, "Coon, are you doing that to just drive me crazy?"
"Doing what?" the raccoon named Jake replied in a generally perplexed manner. "I'm just watching the honey drip, it's kind of fascinating. I saw a documentary about it last night while trying to rock little Nicky back to sleep." The two friends had been working out in the gymnasium at the hotel where Jake lived and they were in the raccoon's penthouse suite having breakfast. The raccoon was dressed only in his exercise shorts and his closely cropped gray fur showed the former burglar's lithe muscular body. Unlike the red fox, he was not on a diet.
"Such exciting times at the Runnel residence," Nick sarcastically scoffed. "I'm surprised the hotel didn't call us cops on you for all the noise you two were making?" He gave his best friend on of his infamous smirks.
After trying to smirk back at the fox, the raccoon continued. "Look, Nicky wasn't going to go back to sleep. He was being very obstinate just like his namesake and godfather."
"Oh, so it's now my fault?" the fox laughed. "The little guy didn't want to miss anything exciting, like a documentary on honey."
"It was three in the morning and he's now six months old, what exciting can things really can be happing at his age? Trust me when I tell you that since the two boys were born I've had no excitement at that time of night or at any time."
"TMI, coon. TMI! I was tucked away in bed at that time of night, while poor Carrots was having all the excitement."
"I take it you were referring to something different then I was?"
"Of course I was, you pervert!" Nick laughed "She was with SWAT and they were busting a gang of rabbits."
"For what, illegal carrot smuggling?"
"They were smuggling a shipment of Midnicampum holicithias."
"They had Night Howlers? What did they want them for?" Jake snapped out. His strange light yellow pupilled eyes flashed with anger. "The yotes gave the city the natural cure for anyone who got affected by their pollen or Doug Ramsey's chemical concoction, so they are useless as a weapon."
"It seems that they are putting small amounts of the powder, along with cocaine, into a street drug called Blue Haze. Not enough to make someone go completely savage as it did you, but enough to go slightly feral. It turns out this becoming the drug of choice at underground raves. They claim it lets down all civilized inhibitions."
"Has anyone been hurt?"
"Not too bad, but there have been a few OD's."
"Where are they smuggling them in from, it can't be the Green Mountains? Mister Walker and his pack watch over those flowers like hawks. You know how coyotes can get about things like that."
"Bunnyburrow," Nick sighed. "That's why they wanted Carrots there when they did the bust, she knows most of the perps."
"Any of her family involved?"
"A couple of her distant cousins, but no one directly related."
"Damn, that had to tear her up a bit."
"Let's just say I don't want to be any of them this morning, I'd rather face Bogo than my honey bunny when she gets worked up."
"Ah yes, honey!" Jake chuckled. "Did you know that on average, a honey bee produces one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey over the course of its life? Also, an average beehive can produce up to one hundred pounds of honey a year! To produce a single pound of honey, a colony of bees must collect nectar from approximately two million flowers and fly over fifty-five thousand miles. This amounts to a lifetime's worth of work for around eight hundred bees…"
Nick reached over and snatched the spoonful of honey from the raccoon's paw and smeared it over his hotcakes. "There, now just shut up about the honey facts!" the fox scoffed. "Just eat your pancakes before I do!"
"Grumpy fox!" Nick snickered as he reached for his fork. "You know that honey is a better sweetener than sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, it's definitely better than that blueberry syrup you put in your coffee.
"I like my blueberry sweeter," Nick softly growled. He looked down at his plate with its single egg, tomato slices, and dry toast with disgust.
"What's the matter?" Jake mumbled out through a mouth full of pancakes.
"This diet is going to kill me and it doesn't help that I have to watch you chow down on those delicious looking fluffy pancakes."
"They are good too!"
"Shut up coon, I thought you were going to support me with this?
"I am," Jake protested as he swallowed his mouth full of honey-covered pancakes and washed it down with a sip of coffee. "Look...see...I didn't put butter on my cakes, that makes them healthier."
