African Vista

I had another dream where the view outside my window did not match what I see in reality. I had awoken to find the house shrouded in mist, pressing thickly against the windows. Eventually it withdrew enough to show me that the town had been encircled by a towering fortification, such as might be found ringing the realm of Mordor. The looming grey walls rose oppressively from the mist, and were topped with spiked battlements that weighed heavy on my heart. I called my father to see if he could also see the walls from his residence. He told me that it was a Zionist government plot and to pay it no heed, the whims of power would change and the walls would melt away as swiftly as they had appeared. More confused than before, I ended the call and returned to the window to take photos. The mist had swept in again and concealed the view. Hoping to find a better angle at the back of the house, I went upstairs to the study window.

I was unprepared for the startling change of scenery. Rather than mist and the wall of doom, I was confronted with a sunny vista of an African wilderness replete with winding, sparkling rivers, emerald green swathes of well-watered veldt, in the middle distance, the ruins of a sandstone temple, and in the far distance, a majestic mountain range, above which an immense rainbow curved over the blue firmament. Roaming across this landscape in staggering numbers and variety were the beasts of the bush, all those well known species of an African safari. Rumbling elephants, loping giraffes, whooping zebra, grunting wildebeest, roaring lions, laughing hyenas, snorting rhinos, yawning hippos, snapping crocodiles, strutting ostriches, quarreling baboons, foraging warthogs, prowling cheetahs, galloping gazelles, and flocks of brilliant white egrets. I immediately took out my camera and began clicking away, overwhelmed with wonder, but worried lest the scene should dissolve before I could finish taking photos. As I tried to zoom in and focus on the pink gape of a hippo in full yawn, the camera died and the dream dissolved.

Jungle Safari

One does not usually associate South America with safaris, but I hear there are some jungle tours available, and these may have influenced my latest dream. During an extraordinarily long and stressful sojourn at an airport with my wife, from where we were trying to fly back to the UK from Europe, we were told to board a bus to another airport. This put me at a great disadvantage, as I was supposed to be meeting up with David Attenborough and embarking on an international ecological trip, starting at Costa Rica. Regretting the cancellation profoundly, I boarded the bus with my wife and we sat back for what promised to be a long and bumpy ride.

As we pulled away from the airport, the scenery around us changed, and we were on a muddy jungle trail punctuated every so often by corrugated metal shacks. It was whilst passing one such shack that I saw a green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) slithering out from behind a building. Despite its species name, this particular snake was its characteristic brown with black spots. As we were travelling slowly and forced to stop frequently due to the bad quality of the road, I had time to point out the snake to my wife, whereupon several other people on the bus also took an interest. We moved off again, and before long we saw a small jaguar (Panthera onca) wearing a collar and lead, clearly a roadside curiosity.

The air had a certain thickness, and the sickly sweet scent of the rainforest, yet as far as I knew, we were still supposed to be in Europe. More animals appeared out of the side windows, a wild boar (Sus scrofa), a serval (Leptailurus serval), greater rheas (Rhea americana), and a ragtag herd of camelids, most notably scruffy-looking llamas (Llama glama) and alpacas (Vicugna pacos) moulting clumps of shaggy hair. Mixed in with the llamas were some curious camel-like beasts I had never been before. Physically they resembled Bactrian camels, but they were rather longer and had dappled coats. Some locals on the bus told me that they were giraffe-camel hybrids, but I forget what they called them. They seemed to be bred for no purpose other than to look strange.

Israel Zoo

There's a highly recommended computer game called Planet Zoo, which I confess to buying an expensive gaming rig for, purely so I could play on the highest settings. The zoo simulation with linked to an online workshop where you can download other players' creations to explore and admire. Lacking the time to make elaborate builds, this has lately been my go-to strategy. In last night's dream, set in the future, the zoos I perused were ones I could visit in real life. The Israel Zoo caught my eye, and after confirming on the holographic catalogue, I arrived at the gates to see what I could see.

The zoo was on the coast, and the first enclosure, right at the entrance, was made for a killer whale (Orcinus orca). It swam around in his blue pool, only a low sandstone wall separating it from guests. I watched the tall dorsal fin slicing through the water, marveling at the rarely seen sight of a captive orca. Before I could head through the gates into the main zoo, I saw my dog Beibei barreling straight for the pool. With an excited leap, he cleared the low wall and splashed into the shallows. At the same time, a keeper had hauled a bucketful of fish into the pool, and it was these that my dog wanted to play with.

The killer whale made a beeline over to the fish, its exposed tongue shining bright pink in the sunlight. Oblivious to the danger, my idiot dog continued gambolling in the shallows with the fish. When he's wet, he somewhat resembles a sea-lion, and those being the natural prey of the killer whale, he was now on the menu. I whistled for him frantically, but as in real life, his recall is abysmal, and he ignored me. With a surge that caused a wave to douse myself and the plaza where I stood, the huge whale rushed at Beibei and closed its jaws around the nape of his neck. It proceeded to shake him like a ragdoll, tossing him free of the pool entirely. He struggled to his feet, still alive but with a deep wound on the back of his neck. I scooped him up ready to take him to the vets, annoyed I would have to forego the zoo.

Poltergeist! Poltergeist!

I awoke at 3 am unable to breathe. I sprang out of bed, sucked in mouthfuls of air until my lungs started working again, and then ran to the bathroom with an urge to vomit. The nausea thankfully passed, sparing me from that unpleasant situation. I was then scolded by my wife for having woken her and our daughter who both slept on the floor above, and it was in a grumbling state of mind that I fell back to sleep. I awoke again, this time with a feeling of intense sickness and my body gripped by an unearthly semi-paralysis. I stumbled out of bed and shakily climbed the stairs to the top floor, feeling as though I were fading from this world. My wife was in bed watching a bad horror film sequel, and in a chair next to her sat a film professor from the university, a middle aged woman whom I had never seen before.

I was invited into the bed on my wife's side, keeping away from the professor, who wore a face mask in-line with Covid-19 regulations. I told my wife of my symptoms and she advised me to stay still and watch the film until my discombobulation should pass. Her advice proved effective, and I soon I felt sufficiently strong enough to leave the room and head back downstairs to check on our daughter, who was now on the middle floor by herself. I knew immediately upon entering her bedroom that something was wrong. Sure enough, my instincts proved correct, for I perceived that her bed lay against the opposite side of the room from where it had previously been. She remained sound asleep, so I turned on the lights to wake her and find out how (and why) she had managed to move it all that way by herself.

When I saw the rest of the bedroom, I gasped in astonishment. The entire layout of the furniture and toys had changed, to the degree that it could not possibly have been done by her. Some of the toys and trinkets were stacked in precarious pyramids that a three year old would be unable to accomplish, heavy furniture had changed walls. With my debilitating sickness of earlier and this bizarre rearrangement of the room, I came to the swift conclusion that it was the work of a poltergeist. I ran into the hallway and attempted to shout out a warning for those upstairs, but fear had constricted by throat, and as is common in these situations, the words were stuck in a husky gurgle. I took a deep breath and tried again, shouting out "Poltergeist! Poltergeist!" as clearly as I could. I awoke again, most confused as to what was real and imagined. I had taken a few glasses of strong wine and some equally strong cheese before bed, so I lay the blame there.