Dream: Malibu Wildlife Search

Walking in sand dunes along the beach near Malibu, California, though out of sight of the water. I reach the top of a small rise. To the east at the bottom of the little hill is a large animal that I decide is a tapir. I become aware that I am looking for one of the largest animals in the world and that it is around here. I am narrating my journey, as if in a nature documentary, though there seems to be no point in doing so: no camera, no recorder, no phone. The "tapir" is not much like a tapir, and there seem to be two of them. It is the size of a hippo, and hippo-like, but where the nose flap is on a tapir, it has a foot long truck like an elephant's.

The tapir are not the large animal I am looking for.

Turning around at the base of the hill, where I have to return, a very large alligator has buried itself into the sand, like it would were the sand water, floating at or just below the surface. The alligator is dangerous.

I am aware that none of these animals are native to Malibu.

The hill seems to get steeper, and I am having a hard time not slipping down the sand towards the alligator. It seems inevitable that I will.