My Dreams Screwed Up a Fantasy I'd Entertained
Last night was the first time I've had a dream featuring echidnas. I woke up in the midst of it with the paranoid realization that I needed to google what the laws were on taking Australian animals to the states, because I was likely in a lot of trouble if I was found out. For a few minutes this was an imperative concern that I had here in the real world. Then I fell back asleep.
Earlier, back in the fake world, I'd absconded from a zoo somewhere with a couple of adolescent puggles no one had noticed buried in the dirt. I decided they could live in my back yard, which was actually the backyard from my dad's old house. They didn't exactly thrive out there, even though there were several large colonies of ants. One seemed to be doing fine actually, but the other one started to go bald, first in a male pattern sort of way on its back, then entirely. There's not much sadder than a spineless echidna, except for me, later in the dream.
After returning from my interlude worrying in the real world, I was miraculously able to have conversations with the echidnas, cuz why not? I implored the bald one as to why it wasn't eating; couldn't it see there were plenty of ants?
"Sure there are plenty of ants, I could eat those, but you think that's what I want to eat?"
[It may be true some echidnas prefer things other than ants, like smushed beetle innards or worm paste, but those don't show up so well in stool, so all we can be certain of them eating is ants or termites.]
After this conversation I started providing a bunch of worms for the echidnas to eat, and they seemed to be happier, though the one never recovered from his baldness.
Some time later I was talking to a crazy shriveled old man in the top floor of an apartment building with an illusionary wall I dove through to avoid the cops, like you might do in a dream, when my brother burst into the room, very upset.
"They're dead"
According to my brother, he'd just been sitting there, watching them eat, and suddenly they just started throwing up profusely through their tiny millimeter wide mouths. Minutes this went on, until it seemed they'd puke more matter than they contained in their bodies, until they started to deflate. Then they died.
I'm not sure what killed them, but my guess was they weren't used to the bizarre bugs and viruses we have over here. Just like how the Europeans wiped out the Native Americans in colonial times and Earth wiped out the Martians back in 1938.
After the whole not eating, balding thing I'd been concerned, but they'd started recovering so things seemed to be going fine. This news devastated me. What made it so much worse was the fact that I hadn't been there for them when it happened; I'd really emotionally bonded with these echidnas.
It's just not responsible to try and raise exotic wildlife from different continents. I've been kinda sad all day.
Earlier, back in the fake world, I'd absconded from a zoo somewhere with a couple of adolescent puggles no one had noticed buried in the dirt. I decided they could live in my back yard, which was actually the backyard from my dad's old house. They didn't exactly thrive out there, even though there were several large colonies of ants. One seemed to be doing fine actually, but the other one started to go bald, first in a male pattern sort of way on its back, then entirely. There's not much sadder than a spineless echidna, except for me, later in the dream.
After returning from my interlude worrying in the real world, I was miraculously able to have conversations with the echidnas, cuz why not? I implored the bald one as to why it wasn't eating; couldn't it see there were plenty of ants?
"Sure there are plenty of ants, I could eat those, but you think that's what I want to eat?"
[It may be true some echidnas prefer things other than ants, like smushed beetle innards or worm paste, but those don't show up so well in stool, so all we can be certain of them eating is ants or termites.]
After this conversation I started providing a bunch of worms for the echidnas to eat, and they seemed to be happier, though the one never recovered from his baldness.
Some time later I was talking to a crazy shriveled old man in the top floor of an apartment building with an illusionary wall I dove through to avoid the cops, like you might do in a dream, when my brother burst into the room, very upset.
"They're dead"
According to my brother, he'd just been sitting there, watching them eat, and suddenly they just started throwing up profusely through their tiny millimeter wide mouths. Minutes this went on, until it seemed they'd puke more matter than they contained in their bodies, until they started to deflate. Then they died.
I'm not sure what killed them, but my guess was they weren't used to the bizarre bugs and viruses we have over here. Just like how the Europeans wiped out the Native Americans in colonial times and Earth wiped out the Martians back in 1938.
After the whole not eating, balding thing I'd been concerned, but they'd started recovering so things seemed to be going fine. This news devastated me. What made it so much worse was the fact that I hadn't been there for them when it happened; I'd really emotionally bonded with these echidnas.
It's just not responsible to try and raise exotic wildlife from different continents. I've been kinda sad all day.