The only herp dream I've ever had that I can actually remember happened a few nights ago. I'm not completely sure why, but my friend was at my house. It didn't even look like my house, really... It's like all of the tanks were in a big bag or a box and we were outside on my front lawn, at night.... I don't know, my dreams tend to be weird and blurry. Anyway, this friend has refused to come to my house since I got Snake #2, the beauty rat snake, so she has only met one. In the dream, I was showing her each of the snakes. Apparently, I had agreed not to take out Lucy, the beauty, because she's big and food aggressive and this friend is a bit snake-phobic.
I pulled out a small cage with a half-screen top, and the other half was glass and slid out. I opened up the cage thinking it was one of my smaller corn snakes, as this cage is about as big as Lucy is if she curled into a tight ball. For some reason, this cage was on its side, but nothing was spilling off of what was supposed to be the bottom, so somehow, gravity wasn't working right. I started to move the hide, and then panicked and started yelling, "Big snake! This is the big snake! Gimme the top, gimme the top!" I stuffed the screen portion of the top on, and she handed me the glass portion, but when I put it on, it was too small! The front strip of plastic fit, but the glass itself had shrunk from left to right, and now, there was a gap of at least a few inches on either side. Lucy, who had somehow been hiding in the cardboard box hide on the bottom of the tank (remember how small this tank is supposed to be?), had already started to come out, though, and I couldn't keep her in because the top didn't fit! Lucy slid right out through the ridiculous gap between the glass top and the side of the tank. I went to catch her before she could get away, and, miraculously, she only bit me once or twice, and didn't hang on like she normally does! The bites definitely seemed to be as severe as normal, but they didn't hurt, either...
So now, with snake in hand, I jump up and start looking for a new tank. My friend is right behind me, strangely not afraid. Somehow, we go from my front yard in the residential part of town to the business part of town down a big hill and about half a mile down the highway in what amounted to be a small residential block. So we ran down the street, with our only lighting being the occasional streetlamp and the oddly BRIGHT buildings. We started to cross an intersection at a diagonal for some reason, and I looked over to what I think was supposed to be the local theater (with two businesses between it and the street removed), and see another friend from school who's more friends with the friend who I was showing the snakes. She's with three or four people from school; the usual crowd she hangs out with. They all look up at us, and this friend comes running up saying, "Oh, cool snake! Let me see!" while her friends watch. I stop dead, and start yelling, "No! No! Stay back, she'll bite!" As if to prove my point, Lucy is poised to strike in my hands, and aimed directly at her. She stops about five feet from us, all kinds of distraught, and says, "Oh... Okay," before turning and returning to this group of friends.
My friend and I start running again, and now I know what I'm looking for--the big 75 gallon tank in the downstairs family room at home, which I still hadn't had a chance to clean out for her... Only now, I'm looking around and I KNOW it's too far of a walk to get back home to get it. So now I'm running down the street, suddenly two blocks up from the theater next to a little grassy area by the department store, looking for this tank... And the spot, pretty much a miniature park, is about twice as long as it should be. As we're running down the street, I get the bright idea to check the department store! They ALWAYS have a 10 or 15 gallon tank sitting around in their tiny pet section, right?
Well...
That's where I woke up. And remembered that, no, the department store probably wouldn't have a tank sitting around--they had begun downsizing the pet section SEVERELY and I hadn't seen a plain old tank that wasn't in a big "fish kit" on the very TOP shelf in a year...
That was one freaky dream with a ridiculously unexpected outcome. I would've expected a dream where I get attacked so severely by Lucy that I have to go to the hospital or something, but she was actually very calm in the dream... A far cry to her moody hissing and striking last time I got her out to clean her tank. The dream seemed to be more about my fear of what she may do to other people, which I didn't even realize I had!
The only other "herp dream" I've had that I know of was some weird one where, as far as I can remember, Stump, my little Brussels Griffon, was turning periodically into a green corn snake. I had a red corn snake (actually looked much like Greta, only a few times bigger), and I wanted to breed them (apparently, doggy neutering doesn't apply when the dog turns into a snake!), but Stump was jealous of the other snake while I held them (one in each hand), and kept nipping at and even biting her whenever I brought them close enough (or her closer to me than him), even though the red snake was all kinds of nice and wanted to make babies.
Haha. Sorry for the ridiculously lengthy post. That first one was a long dream. =)
