Fear the Crab

I dreamt I was in my brother’s old room, and it was arranged how it was more than a decade ago. Against the wall was a small fish tank, a rectangular one, and rather flat as well. Not in a bowl-y type of way, but like a Phillips Magnavox flat screen monitor kind of design (4 inches thick, I believe). Anyway, there were fish in this fishtank, three small goldfish in clear water with the usual plants and rocks. But as the dream progressed, the fish kept changing. It became two goldfish and a weird white fish. Then it was one gold fish and four tiny blue fish. Perhaps it was that Dr Seuss book in my dream. But it felt like I had this fishtank for years, and I don’t remember ever feeding them. I did remember, however, that there was this box, which used to contain a self-feeding apparatus that worked on a timer. So I looked into the fishtank and there it was, a long glass tube that dispensed food to the fish so you wouldn’t have to remember to feed them. I was staring at this tube, trying to figure out how it worked, when one of the blue fish went up and nudged this thing loose, which was underneath the tube. When this thing came loose, all the food started to spill out into the water, and I thought, “Damn, that’s not going to go well.” And then the food turned into tiny tiny fish, like the size of an ant, and I realized that the tube actually contained fish which were meant for food, and these food fish were kept alive by tiny tiny plants which were also in the tube. But these food fish got out, and all the other fish, of which now there were two sturgeons, one goldfish, and about half a million tiny Kermit the Frogs (yes, all in this fishtank), they all starting gobbling up the fish and I thought, “Damn, that’s really not going to go well.” The Kermits all swam up to the top of the fish tank to say “hi ho” while the rest of the fish busied themselves by doing fishy things.

Then the dream turned weird, but I don’t remember too much of it. I am haunted by images of a bottom-feeder trying to disguise itself as a crab, and not doing that well a job of it.