A mouse on the loose!

I woke up in a sweat the other night. My pleasant sleep had turned into a scary nightmare. I dreamed that I owned a chain of pet stores. Yes, I’m not sure if that’s even a thing, but I ran a chain of pet stores up and down the East Coast. My dream was pleasant-enough at first. I was living the high life, I had fast cars, big houses. I was living on Easy Street. 

For some reason, I had to check out one of my biggest stores. To make things even more interesting, I was participating in an episode of the TV Show, Undercover Boss. You know the drill, the CEO dresses up in disguise to talk with the front line workers to find out the real dirt on the business. In my dream, I had a fake mustache and beard and long hair, which I kept in a ponytail. Yes, I know, none of this makes sense, but it’s where my crazy imagination took me. 

In any event, the co-worker I was following asked me to close up the store, while he made a delivery. It was a pretty simple request. No problems, right? However, as soon as he left, I noticed a mouse scurrying across the floor. I figured he must have gotten away from his cage and scooped him up with my glove. Problem solved.  

Compounding interest

However, as soon as I rubbed the little guy’s head and put him in his cage, I noticed more mice on the floor. They seemed to be everywhere, there were two more by the rabbit cages, two more by the dog food. I kept picking them up and they kept getting replaced by ten others. The floor was full of them. 

I’m no fan of mice, but my nightmare took an even scarier turn, every animal imaginable in the store was running loose now: dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, and even the snakes and lizards from the large reptile cages. If I wasn’t in enough trouble, the animals were all mad about being caged-up and had mean, sinister looks in their eyes.

Making a run for it

Thing kept getting worse. I was lost and couldn’t find my way to the exit. I kept thinking I was getting closer to the front door and instead was going deeper and deeper into the store. Behind every shadow, I found more animals running loose.

I knew the store had two or three larger dogs with nasty fangs caged, that, if let loose, could bring me down easy enough. I worried too about the poisonous snakes and that I needed to get out of the store immediately.

Things took an even uglier turn for the worst. The animals started to gang up on me, running underneath my legs, and tripping me up. At one point, I fell and when I looked up, I had a huge Rattlesnake, the rattle in the snake’s tail vibrating a mile-a-minute, on top of me, hissing and preparing to strike.

Welcome back

The snake slithered around my legs and up my ab. I was sure he was ready to go for the kill. Of course, the moment he attacked, I woke from my nightmare. I shot straight up in bed, my heart pounding like I had run a marathon. I still had three hours until I needed to wake, but since I knew I wasn’t going to to be able to go back to sleep the rest of the night, I got up and out of bed.

I thought about my nightmare all the next day. I have no idea what it was trying to tell me, but I can say without any reservation that I have no plans to open a store and certainly no plans to get a pet mouse or snake in the future. I am thinking about a few other purchases though. I’m thinking about a trip to the hardware store to buy a few mouse traps and some ammonia and sulfur. I’m told snakes hate the smell. In addition, I want to buy a few more locks for the front door . . . all to keep out any unfriendly vermin.

What do you think my dream is telling me?