Things that go HRRRRAAAAUUUGGHHHH in the night

I woke up at 1:30 last night in the clammy throes of a terrible Jurassic Park-style nightmare about a mastodon. In my dream, I was by myself trying to protect the girls from the huge beast, urging them to crouch down in some tall grass to keep it from seeing us.

Unfortunately, it did. And it began to charge us. I was screaming at the girls to run, run!!! And I, accompanied by my non-bending knee even in this stupid dream, was trying to move along as quickly as I could, without much success.

It bore down on me, huge and hairy, and I thought in anguish about the girls, who would likely become a tempting dessert, a couple of tasty morsels, after a satisfying dinner of me. I could almost feel its breath on the back of my neck and I wincing, anticipating the skewering with a mighty tusk, hoping that my impending chompage WASN'T GOING TO HURT MUCH, when all of a sudden, I jerked awake and lay there in the darkness, regrouping, breathing.

It was such a relief to open my eyes and see that I wasn't huddled in the itchy weeds of a prehistoric prairie, but rather in my own bed. The bed that I share with my husband. The husband who was blissfully asleep, lying flat on his back with his arms comfortably arranged behind his head. The head with the nose and mouth from which were emerging a series of noises not unlike what the enraged trumpeting of a hungry mastodon might be imagined to sound like.

"HUURRRRRRROOOONNNKKKK!!!!!" he proclaimed, with the bedcovers tidily pulled up to his chin. "HRRRRAAAUUGHHH!!!"

"Honey," I whispered urgently, giving him a poke in the side.

"Ow-don't-poke," he replied groggily in a cross voice.

"Honey, turn on your side. You're snoring like an angry mastodon."

He turned over on his side, fiercely keeping his eyes buttoned shut. "I-can't-snore-don't-do," he said with dignity. More than his share of the blankets went with him as he rolled, but that was okay because I was damp and disheveled from the scary dream anyway.

I got out of bed and got a drink and wiped off my face with a cool washcloth, went back to the bedroom and quietly rearranged the bedclothes from the tangle I'd left them in. With my pillows plumped back up and my heart rate returned to normal, I climbed back in bed and curled up on my left side, putting my chilly toes on my big microwave heating bag at the bottom of the bed, which still amazingly retained some warmth.

Unfortunately, my getting back into bed disturbed my husband's delicate slumber, and as I settled down, he twitched and said distinctly, "THE BENGALS WERE ROBBED" and rolled to his back again.

The next sound I heard as I drifted off to sleep was, not surprisingly, "HRRRRRAAAAAAUUNK!!!"

"Honey?"

"HRRRRAAAARRRRRRRNNN!!!"

"HONEY!!!"