Hen na Yume

An amazing thing happened to me last week. It started like this:

I was playing Da Vinci’s Secret when I saw The Lady With An Ermine. It was my first time to see an ermine, or, in other words, a stoat. It wasn’t eye-catching enough for me, however, and I played on.

A night later, I dreamt of an animal running towards me, a black ermine with white spots (or a white ermine with black spots, you never know with these two). It was wet, and I tried to catch it with one of my friends. When we caught it, I gave it a bath. After that, its coat turned light brown, and I think it officially became my pet.

Now when I woke up I found it necessary to research the animal. I’ve learned in the past not to ignore my dreams, and a color-changing ermine was definitely weird. Here’s what I found out about it that’s weirder:

• The stoat's coat is a rich medium brown with an off-white belly. In winter, the coat is thicker and in regions that experience an inch or more of snow for at least forty days of the year (such as in Armenia[2]), the color changes to white. This white fur is known as "ermine", a term originating either from the Latin phrase "Armenius mūs" ("Armenian mouse")[3] or from a word common to the Germanic and Baltic languages,[4] hence the scientific name. At this stage, where the animal is known as a "stoat", it may be referred to as ermine, or as being "in ermine". The winter ermine has been used in art as a symbol of purity or virginity. The white fur was highly prized, and used in the robes of the Lord Chief Justice of England. The furs would be sewn together making a pattern of black dots. A version of this pattern is used in heraldry as ermine tincture. Both the animal and the heraldic tincture are symbols of Brittany.

Also, I found a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I with a white ermine with black spots on her arm.

Is that weird or what? How could I possibly know about an animal that I’ve only seen once in a video game?