I had a weird dream Thursday night, about lions and tigers running around at AccuWeather HQ, where I work. I don’t usually remember my dreams with such clarity; when I do, I like to write them down. I also believe that dreams are made primarily from things that you see or hear during the day, but don’t fully process (don’t think about too deeply).

In the dream, I was testing a new binocular-camera type gadget. I saw some deer run out of the woods behind the building, and focused the camera on them. I was excited to have captured the deer up close as they ran past me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that came out of the woods — they were followed by two tigers, two small elephants, a panda, and a lion. I believe the tigers were in the dream because I uploaded this silly AccuWeather graphic to Facebook on Thursday:

And I believe the setting came from a walk — the first of this year due to warmer weather — around AccuWeather and the parking lot next door, as shown on the map below.

By the time the lion walked up to me, I was at the edge of the yard sitting up against an electricity station (you know, those big green electrical boxes). The lion rubbed his head on the corner of the box as I was snapping pictures but I was terrified that he, or one of the other animals might attack me.

Eventually, however, he moved on. Some of my coworkers and my wife emerged from the building and I excitedly told them what had happened. At this point, someone pointed out that the animals were being herded into a blue tour bus behind me, in the parking lot of the neighboring building.

I said we should chase them down or at least call the police with their license plate, since they could let the dangerous animals out again at another location. My wife, a couple coworkers and I jumped into someone’s SUV and gave chase down Science Park Road. We were able to get next to them on the right (not possible… in reality it’s a two-way street) and I attempted to take a picture of their front license plate. I remember that it said “MON ==> 10” or something very close to that, and that it was a North Carolina plate (I used to live there so I know what they look like; I’ve mocked up the plate below).

(Goofs: North Carolina license plates go on the back, and the arrow character is not one of the special characters allowed. They do allow #, ? and !, and I once tried to get just a question mark and they said no, but that’s a story for another day).

I think at this point I woke up, because I don’t remember anything else. I’m not sure where the tour bus came from, or the North Carolina license plate, but I may well have encountered them both in passing.