Don't let Patrick find out about this news story:

Hundreds of starfish have been found dead on a beach on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, and a scientist says a nonnative parasite is likely to blame.

Purple sea stars began washing up last week in Trail Bay at Sechelt, north of Vancouver. The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans has been unable to determine why they died, agency spokeswoman Michelle Imbeau said.

Bruce Leighton, a marine parasite expert at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, noted Wednesday that the die-off coincided with the peak of the starfish reproductive cycle, when the creatures are most vulnerable to Orchitophrya stellarum, a protozoan that feeds on sea stars' sperm.

First of all, eeeewww, huh? Kinda gross. Nonetheless, I hope that they figure out what's killing the starfish and are able to save the rest of the little guys. Around these parts, we regularly watch a scientifically accurate TV show with our kids, where we've learned that starfish are comical, clumsy little guys with good intentions who wear Bermuda shorts. We wish them all the best.

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That's not what I wanted to write about today, though. I wanted to write about a horrible nightmare I had last night.

Lately I've been having vivid, scary dreams. This happens from time to time, and I'll usually have three or four nights of scary dreams in a row, and then they subside. Last night I dreamed about werewolves.

The werewolves in my dream were really, really, really, really super scary. Big, hulking monsters who enjoyed nothing more than tearing people limb from limb. They were ferocious and horrifying in their destructive power. There were four of them, and they'd come out at night and travel down the river that runs through the county we live in, wreaking havoc on the towns along the river as they went. They were headed this way, and I was worried about them. Extremely worried.

They slept in the tops of electrical towers. I don't know why. They'd just climb to the tops of those towers every morning and sleep there during the day, and it was almost impossible for the authorities to find them there.

One of them looked like Randy Quaid.

Hey, I never said that the dream made any sense... or that it seemed scary right now... but oh, boy was it ever scary last night; big, hulking Randy Quaid werewolf monster coming down the river to wipe out my town. Sheeeez!


So this morning I started wondering about the significance of werewolves with regard to dream interpretation. I don't usually care a lot about dream interpretation theory, but having had a nightmare that scared the pants off of me got my interest up. I found out from this site that werewolves who show up in your dreams might mean the following:

WEREWOLF : Werewolves often symbolize people who have undergone a total change in character usually for the worst. It may link to someone who has suddenly shown you a darker and more scarier side - maybe they lost their temper with you on the day before the dream.

All of which is fine, except that I didn't have any kind of disagreement with anyone yesterday. Nobody lost their temper. Nobody gave me any reason to question their nature yesterday.

Plus, I don't know how much I trust the guy who set up the geocities site where I found that information. His geocities screen-name, after all, is "HairyBobby2000." For all I know, he might be a werewolf himself. Or may have been one six years ago. When I went to Google Image Search and did a search for Hairy Bobby, one of the images that came up was this image here. Those look like werewolf feet to me, and the matter is settled in my mind.

In popular culture, the way werewolves have looked over the years has really evolved. Some of the popular werewolf images strike me as scary. Some don't.

Lon Chaney, Jr.'s classic werewolf look always struck me as kinda comical. It just isn't really scary. I mean, come on! Look at that cute little nose! Don't you just want to scratch his ear?

I've known people who literally considered the werewolf from Teen Wolf to be very scary. I don't know if they had been sniffing glue or not.

The werewolves from Wolfen were kinda scary, I guess... because they were basically real wolves. Not obvious manmade monsters. Real wolves can mess you up if they want to, so I suppose they're not to be trifled with.

This guy is the werewolf from The Howling. He looks like he's part werewolf, part zombie, part vampire. Come on, dude. Pick a monster and go with it. At this point you're all over the board, and I can't take you seriously.

Now this, for my money, is one scary werewolf. The werewolves in my dream last night kinda looked like this, only bigger. This is the werewolf from An American Werewolf In London. Now, the movie is actually a dark, black comedy... but the werewolf itself is really pretty darn scary. The movie is scary and funny. That's a hard combination to pull off.

In the meantime, all I can do is hope I don't have that nightmare again. At least I found out from the net that other people have had these werewolf dreams, too.

Labels: Entertainment, Personal