COLOSSEUM DREAM

Posted by Erik Frey Tue, 18 Feb 2003 06:38:00 GMT

i had a dream last night. i was visiting the colosseum, except in my dream it was still in mint condition, with the walls intact and the massive wooden stage/platform covering the hallways underneath. the only curious difference, and this was something of a matter of fact in my dream, was that the colosseum was infested with roaches, so much so that you couldn’t see the stage. it was simply a sea of brown, and the sea rolled over all the benches and archways and corridors, and emitted this roar of hissing and clicking that one might definitely find unsettling.

my solution to this problem, which, again, seemed simply a matter of course, was to release hordes of rats into the colosseum. and so i did. i remember the giant crates being lowered onto their sides, and i could hear squeaking and scuttling and scratching at the wooden panels and pink noses poking out between the slats. and all at once, the crates all opened and rats came pouring out, and they flowed down the steps of the colosseum like a giant grey rug, rolling down towards the stage.

and the seas of grey and brown mixed, and the roar that ensued was… odd. the hissing and clicking turned into this high pitched… whine? screech, maybe, mixed with the sounds of crunching and snapping, and scuttling, which settled shortly after, leaving only a colosseum filled with engorged, sated rats. of course, the rats didn’t stay sated very long, and soon i had a new infestation problem, as the rats took a liking to the place, and made it their home, not in the crevices and ducts but out in the open, breeding their young on the benches and biting at the toes of barefoot children. and their numbers grew until the colosseum was a rat-filled wasteland, every section filled with rats, and from miles in any direction you could hear the chattering and squeaking that echoed, or perhaps, rumbled, from the building.

so i did what any fellow would do. giant golden cages were erected at the top of every spire around the colosseum. from within the cages came a gentle purring and squawking and rattling. at the signal, every cage opened and thousands of rainbow-colored toucans swept down into the colosseum.

i’m not sure if it’s common knowledge, but one of the things toucans love most is mice (try getting kellogs to admit that! ha!). they have a curious way of catching mice. they’ll swoop down and snap one up in their beaks, and for purposes i’m not quite sure of, they’ll flip the mouse up in the air, catch it with their beak, crunch, then flip it up in the air again, catch it, crunch, and so on. they’ll do this over and over again like a cook flipping pizza dough.

it was a beautiful sight, this rainbow flurry of feathers and squeaking and acrobatic mice-tumbling, as toucans carried the mice up to perches and began munching and crunching away. and when they were done, they flew away in a whirlwind flurry, like bats rushing from a cave, and the only thing left was the occasional tuft of mouse fur and a toucan dropping here and there.