Menagerie

Melbourne = really odd dreams.

It all starts in a museum like menagerie, all the animals are dead and stuffed, kept behind chicken mesh enclosures. A thin, green tarp covers all the enclosures, keeping them in a cool green glow, and it is -very- important that it is kept on, and covered. Why? Well...you'll find out.

Someone didn't tie a corner of that tarp down properly, or at all really, and the wind picks up the spiderweb mesh, uncovering the menagerie statues and....they stop becoming statues. At first it's no big thing, marsupials like rats, and mice, going onto the larger ones, the bilby, thylacine...and other ones that I don't know the names of, stretch and ...break open the doors to their cages. Cue me standing there going 'oops...oh no.' as they start to wander, scamper and generally mess around.

And the 'oh no' changes to 'oh shit' as the carnivores and bigger things start to wake up. Like the moa bird. That thing is -huge- and pecks at me. I decide the floor is a very NOT good place to be, and clamber up the partition between one cage and the next. I'm happily sitting here, watching the enclosures being uncovered, the big cats start prowling, you know, the sabre toothed kind, before a dinosaur, diplodocus to those that know the thunder lizards, barges by and I start 'oh shit'ing in earnest. With valid reason too, as the t-rex wakes up and starts thud....thud...thudding down the walkway between the two rows of enclosures.

There's one enclosure holding something -larger- than the king of the dinosaurs, and it wakes up too...I don't actually -see- this massive crocodile leave its enclosure, I only saw the nose...picture a round snout the size of a volkswagon beetle slowly emerging into the light while a t-rex looks at you.

Which would have -more- of your attention?

Yep, the t-rex. Oddly enough, they don't look -down- their snout, they have to dip their snout and look from the top of their head, to focus the two eyes in binocular vision. Really ...disturbing. And me going, oh shit oh shitohshiiiiiit as it snaps at me. Mad scramble back and thud on the hay of an empty enclosure...well, mostly empty. Giraffes are -niiiiice-. I like Giraffes. T-rexes don't, they ignore the longlegged food supplies to go for the human girl scrambling back through the legs.

And...lets skip the massive runrunrunrun DUCK runrunrun part to where I hide in the swan enclosure. Yes, the swan enclosure. And the drake hisses at me because I almost disturbed the missus who was sitting on her clutch. A sorry and a squeeeze into the box that holds a different nest, so I'm sitting -next- to the dry grass thing, hoping that the t-rex wont' find me.

A monkey boy caveman thing drops in, looks at me all scrunched back into the box and asks "Are you comfortable?"

"Yeah...I'm fine." I reply with a bit of a bemused look on my face

"you don't -look- comfortable."

"Thats because I'm hiding, look, go pat the swans!"

He does, and thud....thud...thud the t-rex is back. And of course, he stops right by the swans enclosure, dips his head -really- close to the ground, twists, and looks straight at me. Snarl, snap, box is captures in those jaws, bottom drops out and I thud on the floor as he struggles with the wood. Bolt for the little door at the back to get into the service way and...thudthudthudthud

How the DEVIL can the t-rex get from INFRONT of the enclosures to the BACK of the enclosures, going AROUND all of the enclosures and past that giant crocodile which is now sitting up on its tail, bouncing and going 'deedly deedly dee' at me FASTER than I can get through -one- little door?

Repeat about five times before, brainwave! lets shut and lock the chickenmesh door that it was slipping through!

....


It went -through- the doors regardless. Two broken doors now.

That worked.

Not.

It's about now that I decide to wake up. You can only say 'oh shit' and 'that is -so- not fair' so many times, run your lungs out and be absolutely terrified so many times before it gets a bit boring.

My boyfriend asked why I woke up in the morning (after I woke the whole house by setting off the alarm to let the cat in >_<), my response? 'I got sick of being chased by a t-rex'.