The Rankin Zoo

Coral often (uh, maybe every night) comes into our room sometime after we go to sleep and sleeps on the floor next to our bed. Actually, she sleeps on Scout’s bed (Scout is our dog – he then has to go sleep on the floor somewhere) – but that’s not the point of this story.

Last night, after sleeping on Scout’s bed for a while, she work me up and asked if she could sleep in our bed. I was half asleep and we already had two adults, one child, and one cat sleeping in the bed – so I said “No” and went back to sleep. Since I only get about 7 inches of bed to sleep on there’s not much room – but somehow she managed to squeeze in on the edge of the bed. Anyway, that’s not the point of this story either.

This evening I asked her why she climbed in bed with us and the conversation went like this:

Me: “Why did you get in bed with us last night?”

Coral: “I had a bad dream.”

Me: “Really? What was it about?”

Coral: “It was about a stuffed animal bunny rabbit under the bed that was talking to me.”

Me: “It was talking to you! What did it say?”

Coral: “It said, ‘Nice to meet you!’”

Me: “That sounds like a nice bunny – why was that scary?”

Coral: “Because stuffed animals aren’t supposed to talk!”

That last line was delivered with a sort of “you idiot” tone of voice. But the thing is, it’s entirely possible that Coral was joking. She’s told us before that she has bad dreams, and she probably does, but she’s never been willing to tell us what they’re about. Maybe this dream really was about a talking bunny – or maybe she made that up because she knew I’d think it was funny.