"Reefer Mammal" - 1.1 Version - TT Zootopia

"Reefer Mammal" - 1.1 Version - Thematic Thursday (Roaring Twenties) Piece on Zootopia - By PseudoFox

 

(One fateful evening in Zootopia, many decades before the Bellwether crisis...)

 

Rick Wilde thrust his fist upon the huge red door. Hearing a loud "whomp" on the old wood but nothing at all coming from the inside, he knocked again. The apartment remained as dormant as the inside of a flapper's head. The fox knocked yet again. He made a deep snort, waving his arms against his tight-fitting, charcoal-grey suit, and hurled his paw forward.

 

The door yanked open. The fox smashed flat on the floor with a fluffy "poot" noise. He tilted his head up, his small black eyelasses sliding back into place as he moved, and looked straight out in front of him.

 

"Oh, there you are, sir," Hunnie said. The badger slipped her big arms down her purple polka dot covered skirt and hoisted the fox back into place. "I wasn't sure that you'd get the message."

 

"Next time somebody needs to get a hold of me,"  the fox remarked, brushing himself off, "I'd rather that they don't shove their booming voice into the middle of a Mayor Dairyley address. I just about spilled my hot cocoa all over my big brown radio set, feeling afraid that the expensive thing is haunted or something—"

 

"It's great news that the contraption finally worked!" Hunnie declared, pointing triumphantly off to the side. Most of her apartment had gotten transformed into a makeshift laboratory. Stacks of vacuum tubes sat admits blinking lights and vent-covered metal boxes—everything getting buried by twisted arrays of small cables.

 

"Fine," Rick said, holding up a paw and trying his best not to roll his eyes, "but what exactly—"

 

"Now, the populace can finally know the truth about the ewes," Hunnie interjected, spinning around and tweaking a bunch of little wires, "and their twisted plan to feed us insects— insects, for goodness' sake— instead of the concentrated soybean paste that—"

 

"Honey!" Rick called out.

 

"Yes?" She flipped herself around, her paws held against the sides of her toothy grin.

 

"The radio message! Tell me: what happened to Fonnick?"

 

"Oh, that!" The badger's eyes grew wide. She braced her arms upon Rick's chest, the fox waiting in tense anticipation. "I'm afraid that he's in the hospital."

 

"The hospital! What is it?"

 

"It's a building complex with doctors and other staff supplying health care, but that's not important right now."

 

"Honey..."

 

"He's spent more and more time in Harelem recently, being amazed to see long-eared business types and excitable, horn-playing predators getting along, but tonight apparently the place got so 'jumping' that—"

 

"Yes?" Rick asked, leaning down and locking eyes with the badger.

 

"He had some kind of an allergic reaction. Pretty serious."

 

"Oh, the saints help me!" Rick slapped the side of his head, almost knocking his glasses off. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a long breath through his nose. "How many times do I have to tell Fonnick— all that filthy 'hooch' that they serve isn't just illegal, but the alcoholic broth gets laced with dangerous—"

 

"It wasn't that," Hunnie interjected, thrusting a paw to the side, "but I'm sorry to say that it's... worse." She clutched a small paper note and held her head back, confusion appearing across her face. "Here."

 

If the obsessive, eccentric badger felt worried about it, Rick knew, then the news had to be surprisingly serious. He held the note right up in front of his eyes. His jaw dropped.

 

"That little fox has brains all full of reefer?" Rick shrieked.

 

"Full of reefer," Hunnie repeated.

 

"You telling me that he's with all of those dirty, jazz-crazy cats? And him and those cats... are all high?"

 

"Sailin'," the badger remarked, flopping backwards onto a small couch. The dissapointment on her face couldn't be any clearer.

 

"He got talked into sampling some of the devil's unholy plants, and they're probably still with him at the hospital right now!" Rick yelled. He had little, if not no, time to lose, he thought.

 

Sheer terror flashed all through the fox's senses. He flipped his arms in the air, panting loudly, and spun himself around. It took only a matter of seconds for Rick to amble right out of the apartment complex and onto the nearby street.

 

"Confound this," he sputtered, gripping his paws upon his big black automobile's crank, "this... infernal Model T! Or Model A! Or whatever part of the alphabet the Fnord company stole for this oversize—" He shut his mouth as the vehicle finally sputtered to life. "Praise the saints!"

 

Rick sped into the open door and shifted the car into gear. Thankfully, it was late enough at night— the moon starting its path across the huge, open sky above downtown Zootopia— that the non-nocturnal areas were mostly empty. The occasional tall antelope or portly sheep wandered along the cobblestone roads, often folding and unfolding newspapers before slipping them into their fancy jackets. Rick waved them away with a few honks of his Fnord. He followed a trail of gas-powered street-lamps— their sharp, symbol-covered ends piercing the cloudless sky, to the hospital building.

 

"I'm not too late!" Rick declared to himself, ambling out of the car. He glanced upward at the dull brick and mortar structure, with flat layers of grimy windows featuring plain white curtains stretching out above him. "I must not be too late! And I'm not, I'm sure of it!"

 

He sped into the lobby, seeing nobody around the plant-filled waiting room, and made his way down an adjacent hallway. A bison with a long stethoscope and a tense-looking expression shot out an arm in front of him. Rick halted, looking up and down at the big prey mammal's white laboratory coat. Both of them frowned.

 

"Oh, are you a friend or associate of the fox that recently came in? A mister... Fonnick?" the bison asked in his strong, deep voice.

 

"Yes, indeed," Rick replied, clasping his paws together as he felt some joy for once.

 

"He's located in the room right beside us," the bison said, running an arm against the wall, "however, I must warn you that some..." He hunted for the right word to use. "Undesirable mammals have taken up shop around his bed. I've actually been called in to remove them."

 

"Sir, doctor," Rick said, shaking a bit as he felt his emotion overtaking him, "I know that he's in a bad situation and all... I... I just, please, I want to see him! I can help him!"

 

Without another word, the fox thrust his body against the wall. He shot out his paws and clasped the doorknob. He hurled himself inside, not even really looking at the room, and wound up braced against a set of dresser drawers. The sight that he then behold was one that he'd never forget as long as he lived.

 

Giant panther after giant lynx after giant lion and a group of other immense felines danced around in snappy suit jackets with flamboyant red ties. Booming trombones, trumpets, saxophones, and other shiny instruments shot up in the air— such a racket came out of them that Rick's ears felt as if they might fall clean off of his head. The huge predators' paws made impromptu percussion out of anything in the hospital room— a muscle-coated leopard tapping idly upon a typewriter before using a long ceramic display as a xylophone. The slippery, reeling jazz that the felines created appeared to make a mess out of Rick's very soul.

 

There, in the middle of the commotion, lay the barely conscious Fonnick. He had on a goofy expression of stupefying pleasure— eyes held wide open while his tongue slobbered out the side of his mouth. Small, wrapped up pieces of a notorious weed coupled with tall glasses full of dangerous orange liquid exchanged paws above Fonnick's body.

 

"Excuse... me..." Rick murmured, the emotional shock of the moment enough that he could get knocked back with a feather.

 

"Oh, yes, it's dat other fox we we're just talkin' about!" A panther appeared besides Rick and grabbed both the fox's arm and paw, giving a non-consensual pawshake. "He hasn't heard yet how his pint-sized friend accidentally took a big-size whiff."

 

"Oh, dat orange mammal with the glasses we heard about!"

 

"He knows Fonnick. But he ain't ready to know who were are! Is he?"

 

"Well, my fine mammals, let us tell him who were are! And what the wonderful Fonnick now is!"

 

That last voice sounded vaguely familiar. All of the mammals in the room turned over to face the speaker— the room's only tiger. The striped mammal radiated raw charisma with his dashing smile and sly stance— slipping a stethoscope through his paws before clutching a particularly tall jug of liquor labeled "happy juice". His loose grey suit and matching grey pants matched his carefree attitude as he gulped the concoction down.

 

"You're... you're... Cat Calloway!" Rick exclaimed, feeling his eyes grow wide as basketballs.

 

"Last time I checked," Cat replied, making a devious smile from cheek to cheek.

 

The crew of felines all around him chuckled. The fox didn't even move. That made the felines laugh even harder.

 

"But... I... well," Rick stammered, slipping to the side and bracing his body against the wall. He tried his best to suck down the last bits of air in the room uncontaminated by weed-fueled aromas. "What happened?"

 

"Oh, indeed! Let me re-introduce you to your small friend," Cat replied. He hopped up in the air and clutched the side of Fonnick's hospital bed. "We've given him a new name. It's called... hit it!"

 

The jazz music fired up. Rick slowly slid down in place before sitting smack dab on the floor. He felt helpless enough that he could only keep witnessing the whole scene.

 

"I believe Mister Spectales here is losin' his mind," a lynx sang, playfully smacking Rick with his tail.

 

"I do believe dat he's lost his mind," a lion sang back.

 

"Oh!" Cat called out, bringing the focus back on himself. The other felines duly obliged with big smiles. "Have you ever met dat funny ol' 'Reefer Mammal'?"

 

"Reefer mammal!" The chorus had everybody point directly at the small fox on the hospital bed.

 

"Ever seen dat funny ol' 'Reefer Mammal'?"

 

"Reefer mammal!"

 

"If he said he swam to China? And he'll sell you South Catolina? Well, you know you're talkin' to dat 'Reefer Mammal'!"

 

"Reefer mammal, hey!"

 

"If somebody trades you dimes for nickles, hey! And calls watermelons 'pickles', hey! Then you're sure you're talkin' to dat 'Reefer Mammal'!"

 

The horns blasted out their slippery sound all through the room. The sheer power seemed to creep right up the drywall and out the dingy window into the entire hospital. When Rick looked right into Cat's big, seductive eyes, he somehow knew that mammal after mammal throughout the whole building had started dancing.

 

"Can you believe," the bison doctor remarked, suddenly stepping into the room, "that some of those lunatic reporters think that by 1979 most mammals will be smoking reefer every day? Even after fifty years of change, no matter what happens, I'll never believe it!"

 

"What..." murmured Rick, feeling totally confused.

 

The felines, for their part, started bantering among themselves. "Maybe after we got a predator Mayor!"

 

"Hah!"

 

"Or we land on the moon!"

 

"Oh, you're killin' me, Cat!"

 

"And the biggest couple on the radio will be a bunny marriyin' a fox!"

 

"I'm dyin'! I'm not dyin'— I'm already dead!"

 

"Hey, between you and me, I'd be perfectly happy to see all of that," Cat interjected, winking before he slapped the shoulders of a pair of trumpeters.

 

The bison stopped. He turned to directly face the fox, standing right above Rick's body. The stern, judgmental face looked as if it could get carved onto a mountain.

 

"Think about what kind of Zootopia you want to live in. Tell your children. Keep off the grass."

 

(End)

 

(Inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svoSSdsNhtA )