For reasons I don't remember, I ended up charged with the care of a baby hippo. I knew that I couldn't take care of a baby hippo, so I was trying to figure out how to find someone who could take the baby hippo for me. While I was trying to figure this out, various people came by. They didn't seem to see why having a baby hippo in my house or on a chain in my front yard was such a big deal. They were excited about other things and at one point during a visit with a couple of them, a show - either Dr. Phil or Oprah - came on and they were doing a segment on the baby hippo which recorded the point at which I started caring for the baby hippo (I think because it had been abandoned?). I was surprised that the narrative in the story included everything I had said about the hippo at the time. Like I was an expert. I also remember that there was travel at some point in the dream and that at first I was expecting a baby at any moment. The baby was born and looked a lot like my 1 year old daughter, so many people didn't realize that there was a new baby unless they saw them together. In the meantime, the baby hippo was growing (not as quickly as I had expected, though) and I still hadn't found a place for it to be, so I had to start making arrangements to make sure the baby hippo had what it needed like food and water. When the dream ended, I was in the process of finding a small plastic pool for it to soak in. I was planning to put it next to the pile of grass clippings under a large tree in my front yard where he spent a lot of time.
It was one of those dreams that I kept returning to during a restless/interrupted period of sleep. But the baby hippo was so striking to me through out that I'm trying to figure out what it might mean. I felt like a dream that means something - I just don't know what. FWIW, I'm female, married and have 5 kids and 1 stepson who lives with us. Also, my husband had a vasectomy last year, so it's highly unlikely that I will have a real baby again.
