THE FOX MEETS THE HOUND WHEN THE PAST BECOMES THE PRESENT...

Here's an interesting (I hope) tale of how dreams can bridge the gulf between the past and the present, as experienced by myself several nights ago.  Let me set the scene.  Having a large back garden, local foxes tend to use it as a playground, sitting up on the bench and sunning themselves (when it's sunny), and sleeping under the bushes.  I feel sorry for them, and sometimes put out a little bit of dog food so that they don't starve, even though I no longer have a dog.  Now, before continuing, I first have to take a small detour which will seem unrelated, but trust me - it's relevant to the theme of this story.

I have an old YOGI BEAR squeaky toy (bought from ebay) whose squeaker didn't work, so I bought a pair of squeaky pet toys from a local pound shop and removed the squeakers from them.  I put one into Yogi, who, I'm sure you'll be overjoyed to know, now works as good as new.  (No?  What's wrong with you lot?)  Then I threw the squeakerless dumbell shaped toys out in the back garden for three young fox cubs to play with.  (This was in the summer.)  One toy soon disappeared, but the other remained under a bush where a fox had taken it to gnaw on, and it's still there as I type.  (The toy, not the fox.)  I see it when I'm out filling the bird feeders, and sometimes wonder where the other one got to. 

So, a few nights ago, I had this dream where my dog ZARA is running about the back garden, when a fox appears.  Zara chases the fox through a hole in the fence (which, as in 'real life', is in a state of disrepair) into the garden of the flats at the back of my house, then the fox chases her back - they're actually playing, not fighting, so I have no concerns.  Then the fox runs back through the fence and sticks its nose into the side of a wooden pallet lying in the flats' garden, and pulls out - guess what?  It's the other squeakerless pet toy, the twin of the one still in my back garden.  "So that's where it got to" I think.

I must've awoken then because I don't remember anything past that point, but I was amazed that, if only in my dream, I'd resolved a current minor mystery, though in reality there is no pallet in the other garden and I still don't know where that second toy disappeared to.  In the dream however, my dog who died 21 years ago, was playing with a present-day fox who retrieved a missing toy purchased only a few months back.  And thus the past and the present merged, and for a short while at least, Zara once again played in the garden where her ashes were scattered just over two decades ago.

Well, I find that amazing, how about the rest of you?  No?  Ach, you're a hard-hearted lot, so you are!  Why not squeak up and voice your underwhelmed reaction in the comments section?   

Posted in: Cartoons