Actually, the end turned out a little crispy. I had to knock a few little black crumbs off of the melty end before I hooked it up to a light source.

For my first test, I crammed the cable bundle into the coils of a compact fluorescent bulb. It didn't seem to be working, but the bulb was so bright, it was hard to tell if the fiber ends were illuminated.

To obscure the light source, I shrouded it in aluminum foil. I wrapped a couple of ears of corn in there too.  I love hot fluorescenced corn!

I also tried aligning it with a 200Watt incandescent light bulb, and I tried turning off all the other lights in the house. No dice.

It took about 20 minutes of staring at the ends of those little fibers to come to grips with the fact that it just wasn't working. Damn!

I had succeeded in creating my very own bundle of dark fiber.

It was definitely a setback, but I'm not done yet! My new plan is to tie all those strands of fishing line back together and to take them out deep-sea fishing.

If I can just land one bioluminescent Bristlemouth, I'll be back in action!