Rabbits and Pythons
I had a dream last night.
Driving in a busted pickup truck on a stretch of Gee's Mill Road where it starts to go downhill, a dead rabbit lay in the middle of the road. We stopped and got out of the truck, and the one peculiar thing I noticed was that the rabbit was unnaturally large. I picked it up by the hind legs and threw it into the ditch that had almost filled up with dirty rainwater.
When you are in the midst of a dream, things seem so palpable to the point that when something formally understood as completely out of the ordinary occurs, you react as though it were a normality. For example, after I threw the dead rabbit of gigantic proportions into the pool of water, it began to choke. Then it suddenly came to life as it began to swim out of the water with graceful, human-like breaststrokes.
Thinking nothing of how impossible this scenario was, I quickly scooped the rabbit into my arms. Like a true wild rabbit in the presence of a human, I could feel the terror that was coursing through entire body of the animal. I myself had some sort of nervous reflex and threw it into the nearby brush, where I promptly saw it devoured by a python as thick as a telephone pole.
To be an animal of prey, you must be in an ever-changing state of some form of all-inclusive panic. Because they are shaped by constant exposure to this environment, they are at peace with having a hair trigger between serenity and absolute terror.
Since I was old enough to appreciate it, I've always been grateful that humans haven't had a natural predator since the advance of modern civilization some 10,000 years ago. If that were not the case, I'd probably shit myself every time someone tapped me on the shoulder.
Driving in a busted pickup truck on a stretch of Gee's Mill Road where it starts to go downhill, a dead rabbit lay in the middle of the road. We stopped and got out of the truck, and the one peculiar thing I noticed was that the rabbit was unnaturally large. I picked it up by the hind legs and threw it into the ditch that had almost filled up with dirty rainwater.
When you are in the midst of a dream, things seem so palpable to the point that when something formally understood as completely out of the ordinary occurs, you react as though it were a normality. For example, after I threw the dead rabbit of gigantic proportions into the pool of water, it began to choke. Then it suddenly came to life as it began to swim out of the water with graceful, human-like breaststrokes.
Thinking nothing of how impossible this scenario was, I quickly scooped the rabbit into my arms. Like a true wild rabbit in the presence of a human, I could feel the terror that was coursing through entire body of the animal. I myself had some sort of nervous reflex and threw it into the nearby brush, where I promptly saw it devoured by a python as thick as a telephone pole.
To be an animal of prey, you must be in an ever-changing state of some form of all-inclusive panic. Because they are shaped by constant exposure to this environment, they are at peace with having a hair trigger between serenity and absolute terror.
Since I was old enough to appreciate it, I've always been grateful that humans haven't had a natural predator since the advance of modern civilization some 10,000 years ago. If that were not the case, I'd probably shit myself every time someone tapped me on the shoulder.
posted by Alex Cruz at
2:06 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home