DREAM: Dead Rodents

I had a very strange dream last night (as if my dreams aren't always strange).

DREAM

I dreamt I was at Cyprus's parents house, even though the house was not recognized and is not the same as her parents' house in waking life, and we were sitting around, watching TV. Her parents weren't her parents in waking life, either. In my dream, they were our friends, Sandy and Larry.

For some reason I decided to go get a blanket from the closet. There was a thin, white blanket, kind of like a jersey sheet, lying on the floor of the closet. I reached for it and it moved. My hand cringed back to me and I looked closer at the blanket. Part of it was disappearing into a space that was between the floor and the wall. I grabbed the blanket and pulled at it. It pulled back! It was like fishing, with a fish tugging at the end of the line. I pulled harder and sure enough, pulled through the crack came a tiny, little mouse. I was surprised by the strength it had. I tugged at the blanket until the mouse let go and then it scurried back into the wall.

I didn't want to make a big deal of this, but I wanted to tell Cyprus that there was a mouse in the house. I carried the blanket with me to the doorway of the living room and waved discreetly to her to come into the other room with me. She did.

In hushed tones, I started to tell her about the mouse. She shifted her weight as she listened intently to me and put one foot on a beanbag chair that was in this sitting room. Suddenly a horrifying odor wafted up toward us and it was the smell of a dead rodent (if anyone has ever smelled this, it is one of the most upsetting smells on the planet). I looked down at her foot on the beanbag and I saw that she had placed her foot on a large, dead, bloated rat! Her foot had squished into the rotting softness and caused the release of those horrible smells!



She freaked out and pulled her foot back, shivering and looking completely disoriented and I just stood there, wide-eyed. There was no hiding our conversation from her parents, so a lot commotion ensued as we dealt with the reality of my finding a mouse and now this dead rat.

I don't remember much of what happened next, but the final thing I remember is eating Twizzlers (strawberry licorice sticks) from a bag on the counter in the kitchen. I leaned against the counter and chewed one up, then reached for another, pulling it from the sticky inside of the bag... I ate it, too. I think Cyprus and her parents were, at this point, dealing more directly with the rodent issue and I was just wandering around, finding these delicious Twizzlers.

I reached for another in the bag and that's when I saw through the clear part of the bag, almost obscured by the lettering and logo, a dead mouse stuck to one side of the inside of the bag!

I started retching...

I woke up.

END DREAM

WAKING LIFE ANALYSIS:

Clearly this was a strange processing of my day, yesterday, because I spent a great deal of it "mouse-proofing" my apartment. I have now seen a mouse in my apartment on several occasions, but very few and far between. I never have a mouse or bug problem, so I don't usually get too concerned about it. I attributed my sightings to the fact that some construction and renovation have been going on in my building that the little mice were just passing through. But I don't want to be a passageway for rodents, so rather than setting traps and killing them (I refuse to do so), I would rather just take preventative measures. I have tried to find every possible point of entry and fill it with steel wool and that expanding foam stuff you can buy from the hardware store. So that's what I did, yesterday.

I think it must have carried over into my dreams.

Now, why they were dead and rotting and playing tug-o-war with a blanket... I don't know!