strange dream

Wed, December 6, 2006
On the morning of the full moon I awoke with this dream still wafting from my mind...

I was near the banks of a body of water, small- like my pond, or like a stream perhaps (I could see the other bank.) I was at some sort of a picnic, but most of the people were leaving/ had left. When I glanced over at the bank of the water, where the lawn blended into cattails and whatnot, I saw some large feathers lying on the ground. True to habit, I went over to collect them- I love feathers, and have a pretty nice collection (in my waking life.) They were amazing feathers, long and solid like cock feathers, but much larger; black with red tips. I thought to myself- "oh! This belongs to that rare raptor..." (and the name rang in my mind... cannot capture it now...). As I walked over to gather the feather, I saw that there were many lying on the ground- tail, wing and primary blood feathers. On the feathers I saw frank blood... and began to have a sinking feeling I was walking into something tragic.

I found the bird floundering on the bank. It was badly injured, part of its wing was blasted off somehow or missing at least; it was bedraggled and bleeding. I still clutched a large group of its feathers in my hands, which I placed on the picnic table while I looked around for something to capture the bird with so I could transport it.

A man was nearby- he was in his 20s, roughly, with tousled brown hair. He saw the predicament and while I was looking for a picnic blanket, he found a paper grocery bag and rolled the top down a little and walked over to the bird. I started towards the bird too and watched as he scooped the bird safely into the bag. When he had the bird in the bag I went over and said, 'how did you know how to do that?' and he told me he'd worked with birds for a summer, and that was their low tech solution.

He handed me the bird, and I took it part way out of the bag to look it over. It was bright and alert, looking at me, but in really bad shape so I started making plans to transport it to our hospital here at school. Just then a flock of what looked like grey peacocks came over and crowded around me. It frightened me a little, because they were tall. They looked tall like peacocks or our wild turkeys here, but a beatiful pearl grey with neat feathers on their crown like peacocks had; not any bird I'd ever seen in real life. They were coming right up against my legs, and so I shooed them away gently but they were not afraid and did not move at all. They seemed curious about the bird in my hands; when I looked again at the bird I held, it was more like a loon or a teal and I knew it to be such a thing.

Before I left to bring the bird to my car, though, I made sure to walk to the picnic table and gather all the feathers... ever the magpie am I...

and awoke.



Birds, I will have to look into the dream symbolism of them; it is not often I dream of birds (more often I dream of horses.) I do dream of flying but I don't think it's the same thing. I love peacocks, their colors and their feathers; and I have a lot of respect for raptors, and am always captivated by them, and see them everywhere in their flight. I even love vultures (they have the most beautiful flight silhouette of them all.) I will have to investigate. Any ideas?