In chapter five of Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is “put to a bed and tied down, and given a shot of morphine” (p. 94). Another soldier named Edgar Derby volunteers to watch over him while he is strapped down and asleep. The drug causes Billy to have an elaborate dream involving giraffes wandering around in a garden.

In the dream, Billy is a giraffe himself, and the other animals have accepted him as such, believing that he poses them no harm. While in this garden of his dream, he wanders around the gravel paths of the garden, pausing to eat some sugar pears from the trees and receive kisses from the female giraffes using their “long, muscular upper lips which they could shape like the bells of bulges” (p. 94–95).

Eventually, the dream involving the giraffes in the garden ends, although Billy remains asleep, “and then he traveled in time” (p. 95). It is unclear if this mention of time travel is referring to another dream that Billy begins to experience or if this is a continuation of the book’s bizarre narrative.