Dream of: 24 March 1996 "Owls"
I was standing in front of a barbed wire fence, looking out into a field. Standing on my right was my wife Carolina and on my left was my step-grandfather Clarence. All three of us were looking at a large tree which was 20-30 meters from us out in the field. I couldn't tell how high the tree was, but it was extremely wide – so wide in fact that I couldn't even see where it ended on either side. All I saw was a massive vista of brown bark out in the field before me.
All my attention was focused on one spot on the bark, about 20 meters up from the ground. There I could see hanging on the bark a bird, with its back toward us. The bird was all brown – almost the same color as the bark – except for several black lines which ran horizontally across its back. Clarence also saw the bird, and he pointed a rifle which he was holding at it, obviously intending to shoot it.
Carolina couldn't see the bird. I pointed it out to her, trying to direct her vision by stretching my arm straight out in front of me toward the bird. But still she couldn't see. As I described the bird to her, it occurred to me that it might be a hawk. Realizing this, and knowing I was particularly fond of hawks, just as Clarence was about to shoot, I pushed his gun up into the air and told him to wait.
As we continued to stare at the bird, I began to notice the bird appeared to be right in front of a hole which was in the side of the tree. And the longer I looked at the hole, the larger it seemed to get. Finally the bird disappeared into the hole, even as the hole continued to expand in size.
The hole finally got so big it almost looked like a long horizontal crevice in the side of the tree. We all continued looking until we saw movement from within the hole and finally we were astonished to see several large owls standing just inside the hole. All the owls were beautiful, with large round white faces. I thought Clarence must surely be glad now that he hadn't shot the bird, for I seemed to recall that he had a fondness for owls. But when I looked over at him, I saw he wasn't concentrating on the tree at all, but was aiming his rifle at some pigeons flying overhead.
What happened next was the most astonishing thing yet. The owls began pulling something out of the hole (which was quite large now), and suddenly they threw the thing out of the hole and to the ground, where it crashed with a thud. The thing thrown from the hole was obviously a man, all dressed in brown the same color as the bird we had first seen. The owls then drug out a sleeping bag and some other items and likewise threw them from the hole to the ground.
I immediately deduced what was happening. I concluded that the man must have been studying the owls and that he had climbed up into the tree and stayed with them in their nest back inside the tree. I thought that the nest must be extremely large and that it was hard to tell how many owls were in the nest.
Up to that point I had felt that crossing over the barbed wire fence into the field was prohibited, but clearly the man who had been thrown from the tree might be seriously injured and might now need help. I quickly jumped over the fence and ran toward him.
Before I could reach the man, a second man intercepted me in the field. I was surprised to see him and I didn't know whence he had appeared so suddenly. I likewise had the impression that several other men had also shown up and that they were over near the man who had been thrown from the tree.
The second man who approached me quickly made it clear to me that he was a police officer. He also made it clear that he was there to arrest the first man who had been thrown from the tree, and that the first man had had no business being in the tree and disturbing the owls. The police office also made it clear to me that I had no business being in the field and he wanted to see my driver's license.
This turn of events threw me for a loop. I generally felt an adversarial contempt for the police, but in this case, it appeared that the police might actually be protecting the owls, and that they were actually doing something good. It appeared that the first man probably shouldn't have been up in the tree with the owls, and that the police should arrest him.
As for myself, I thought I had left my billfold with my driver's license in it back on the other side of the fence with Carolina. I did have my passport in my jacket pocket and I could use it for identification, but the officer had specifically asked for my driver's license and I thought I should get it for him. I told him I would have to go back to the fence and get it. He didn't seem to object and I turned to go back to the fence.
