Chapter 134: Night Bright

Judy comes home from work to find a strange sight.

Judy parked her unmarked police car in the driveway and looked around, not only were the lights inside and outside of her house off, but also those in all of the nearby homes. It was still twilight, but the night was coming on fast and even the street lamps had not yet been turned on. Slowly the rabbit cautiously walked into the house and called out for her husband, but she received no answer. A glance at the stove and the other electronics confirmed that the power was not out and yet all around her the house was dark as if it was. Opening the backdoor, she stepped out onto the patio and saw her husband was kneeling in the backyard next to two very large gray plastic tubs. Sitting in a lounge chair behind the neighboring house was a male raccoon sipping on a drink while he periodically glanced towards where the sun was setting. Nearby were the raccoon's two sons, Nicky and Freddie, a coyfox named Cheri, a skinny coyote named Billy, and several of their other coyote friends. The young kits and pups were chatting with excited anticipation while they impatiently waited for something to happen.

"Nick, what is going on, and why are all the lights off?" she called out to the fox.

"Because it has to be almost completely dark for this to work!" Nick called back as if that was a logical answer. "So we got the neighbors to turn off their lights for a while and Jake called in a favor with someone he knows downtown to have the streetlights turn on a couple of hours late.

"It has to be dark for what to work and what is in those tubs?" Judy asked while she began to cross the lawn towards where the raccoon was sitting.

"Fireflies!" Jake yelled out an answer to her question.

"Fireflies?" the rabbit asked in confusion, her ears were erect and she kept looking at her husband next to the tubs. "Are you saying those tubs are full of fireflies?"

"Yeah, they breed them in the Nocturnal District," Jake answered. "I bought a couple of tubs full for the boys and their friends."

"Oh, I remember back on the farm we would run around and catch fireflies!" Judy reminisced with a smile while she sat down on one of the nearby lawn chairs. "There were hundreds of them in the fields and we had so much fun running around with nets and catching them. We would put them in glass jars and they would light up the jars all night long. Is that what the boys are going to do and if so, why don't they have nets?"

"They are going to do something a little different," Jake chuckled.

The rabbit didn't understand what the raccoon had told her, but before she could question him further, Jake waved his hands. "Okay, everyone line up!" The excited children quickly formed a ragged line. "Nick, dump the boxes!"

The fox started pouring the bugs out of the two tubs and they began to fly about the yard. As the fireflies fluttered around, they began to illuminate their tails and there were hundreds of yellow twinkling orbs seemingly dancing about in the darkness.

"My goodness, how pretty!" Judy laughed and clapped her hands in glee. "It's just like when I was a child."

"Alright guys, go get them!" Jake commanded and the raccoons, the coyfox, and the coyotes all sprinted after the bugs.

"Don't they need jars to…?" Judy began asking but she stopped in midsentence and her mouth fell open in shock at the sight of what was going on.

"Snap…snap…snap!" the laughing predators were running around biting at the insects as if they were flying potato chips.

"They are eating them?" she exclaimed in surprise even as she leaped to her feet. "They are eating the fireflies?"

"Sure, we eat bugs all the time," Jake chuckled.

Judy fell back into her chair with a thump and winced while she watched what was going on in front of her. Then she saw her husband walking towards her. "I can't believe that you and Jake even came up with this idea!" she began to fuss.

"Why not, they taste good?" the fox answered with a shrug of his shoulders and then he asked. "Now, how about giving me a kiss?"

The rabbit groaned and shook her head in disgust when she saw that her husband had also been eating the fireflies and now his fangs were glowing yellow. She looked back at the happily squealing children that were running around in the dark and realized that they too had glowing teeth and tongues. "Predators!" she finally giggled.

This short story came to me while I was watching a few fireflies twinkling in the twilight's growing darkness as they flew around near the woods last night. Of course, real fireflies are poisonous and therefore foxes, raccoons, and coyotes will not eat them, but this is the magical world of Zootopia so why not change things and make them yummy instead.