I was driving in rural northern California or southern Oregon with my mother and my aunt Shelley. We arrived at a gas station/restaurant/bar/general store/music hall sort of place, along a lonely two-lane highway, surrounded by nothing, with a covered wooden walk along the front of it. I think it was owned by my mom's cousin. We went in and looked at the music hall, and then went into the restaurant to eat. We were eating in a greenhouse, though it wasn't warm and didn't have plants in it. We sat at a nice green cast-iron table. The menu had not a listing of foods, but pictures of sculptures and paintings, each marked with a number. You ordered by number. I ordered a small cement sculpture of a cherub and a reddish impressionist painting of flowers. The sculpture's number was 57.
Kelly and i were in Uptown Minneapolis, except it was in Africa. What being in Africa meant was that the town was surrounded by large, gently sloping, grassy mountains, and that there were floating red lights in the sky. These floating red lights were either radio towers or insects, i'm not sure which. We walked to a café to meet up with her friend Yoni from Portland and a friend of his. The café had a warm peach-brownish color scheme, and high tables with stools. Yoni and his friend were in the back, near a bar, around one of the tables. We went and talked with them, but we weren't there long. We didn't have any coffee.
We left the café and walked around Uptown. It was nighttime, and it was pretty. We went and sat on a bench in a field; behind us was a small shed with white walls. We sat there for a while, then saw a capybara out in the field. Well, we called it a capybara, but it had white fur, and it was larger than a pig, and it was in Minneapolis in Africa. Soon, a lion started chasing it. We laughed to see such sport. Another lion came and helped chase. The capybara tried to jump over the fence, but got stuck on top. The lions bit it and killed it, then they ate it.
Kelly and i started to get scared, because we realized that the lions were in the same yard that we were, and if they were going to be running around chasing and killing and eating capybaras, why wouldn't they chase and kill and eat us? We were about to run out of the yard, back down a gravel path to the street, but then one of the lions started walking our way. Kelly was still sitting on the bench, but i was standing by the whitewashed shed. We were paralyzed with fear. The lion—
These lions were not like normal lions. They were all white, and they were huge. Their heads were about a meter in diameter, and they had flat faces surrounded by white puffy fur.
—the lion walked up real close to me. It stared at me and growled. It looked perturbed. It shoved me into the shed with the corner of its face, but then it walked off in a huff. As soon as it was within a safe distance, Kelly and i ran down the path back to the street. We saw that a very large gate had been left open, and we closed it. Still, given that the lions had jumped up and killed the capybara on the fence, we didn't trust the fence to keep us safe. We walked back to the café in Uptown (in Africa).
Kelly and i were rather disturbed by the lion incident, and commented to each other, "People shouldn't be allowed to keep lions in Uptown. It's just not safe!"