Walked into what was apparently a nice garden store in a small room packed with greenery and tanks at every level, with windows overlooking the inside of a larger urban mall. It seemed nice enough.

Then a row of short plants (spinach? carrots?) started wiggling and chattering together, just as they might in the presence of locusts, but this startled me.

Then a small black monster ran across the floor, and immediately thereafter a snake slithed its way across the plants and up to my face.

For the next... half hour? hour? I was successively terrorized by every manner of wild beast or cretin that has ever walked the earth.

All the while, Judith was there, sitting in a corner, unterrified, chuckling at my wild fear.

Eventually, Judith left me to me devices, saying, as she always does, "This is one of my favorite places in San Francisco."

And the shop's owner, a sweet, thin older lady, floated serenely nearby, watching me. Every once in a while a light rain would fall briefly, or some plant's tail would spin on its own.

It was a very long time before I got the idea that this was a sort of Museum of Jurassic Technology, a place where anything could be real but almost nothing is. It became clear when the snake returned and the owner encouraged me to pick him up; I snapped his head as if he were made of the frailest plastic. Even then, though I was prepared for the shocks, I was able to repeatedly abuse myself by looking under some low terrarium, say, and finding a platoon of advancing mice there, all ready to crawl on me.

I awoke throat-parched and wild. Listening, I heard some tiny scratching noise off in the corner. I put on the lights and got a glass of water.