A Serious Infestation

The other night, I dreamed I was inspecting a broken down old shed, and it turned out to have rats. They were huge. One fell out of the ceiling--it was almost the size of a capybara. And really fat. It seemed only mildly concerned about the presence of humans and dizzily stumbled away (must have hit its head pretty hard). There was some guy (an exterminator?) with weapons who started firing on the rats. But then the rats had guns, too, and started shooting at us. We had to run away.

Rats with guns. It's comical, and seems to have some kind of philosophical meaning I can't quite make out. I try to pin it down, but nothing truly does justice to the image. It's more than getting a taste of one's own medicine, more than a commentary on the escalation of violence in war. Because they're rats, for crying out loud. Perhaps it's an image of a world gone horribly wrong--rats having guns is even worse, in some way, than children having guns. Animals should not be capable of intentionally doing evil. Animals can't commit murder. The dream-rats were not anthropomorphized; just enormous.

Perhaps it's silly to look for coherent meaning in a dream. But this one seemed to ask for it.