My Bird's Eye View

It was night-time. The yellowing glow of a harvest moon illuminated the countryside. Pin pricks of light millions of years old dotted the cloudless black/blue sky. I was staring down from on high into a gently swaying sea of corn. My heart was beating more rapidly than it had any right to. Below, the slightest movement attracted my attention, and my head jerked around to focus on the cause. A field mouse was scampering up a stalk to feast on an ear of corn. The stem rocked slightly under the tiny creature’s movement, and it was this which had caught my eye. Suddenly, I was plummeting, swooping towards the ground with alarming speed, my heart now racing impossibly fast. The small rodent was my only focus, appearing larger, almost magnified in my vision. In seconds I was grasping out with razor sharp talons, plucking the creature from its perch, then soaring upwards with one push from powerful wings, levelling out to land high on a nearby tree. The mouse was already dead, pierced by my deadly claws when I began ripping its still warm flesh from the bones. Then grabbing the whole carcass in my beak and swallowing, feeling my throat constricting, squeezing it down, then...

…then I woke up screaming. Screaming and spitting and clawing at my throat, unable to breath. Feeling the gorge rise from my belly I quickly threw back the sheets and darted for the en suite bathroom, barely making it to the toilet bowl in time. Once the convulsions of vomiting subsided, I sat back, and nervously peered into the toilet, half expecting to see a partially digested mouse floating there. But instead, it was my almost fully digested burrito from last night’s dinner. I sank back onto the hard tiled floor, feeling the light perspiration on my forehead coolly evaporating away. After a short time, I rose wearily to my feet, flushed the toilet, and leant against the sink to splash my face with water. Feeling slightly better, I then brushed my teeth vigorously and rinsed with mouthwash, glad to be free of the acidic taste. I returned and lay on my bed, only then thinking to check my bedside alarm clock. It was only five after one in the morning. I had only been asleep for just over two hours.

What the hell sort of dream was that anyway? I’d had weird dreams before, but this one was so vivid, with its full range of sensory input. The whispering of the crops below, the smell of the field mouse, the clarity of vision and the taste of… I quickly abandoned that particular train of thought as my stomach grumbled its disapproval. I now felt wide awake, and in all honesty did not relish the thought of going back to sleep. To quote William Shakespeare, “To sleep, perchance to dream.” No thank you Billy boy, I’d rather avoid that perchance. However, try as I might, I could not shake the dream from my head, such was its intensity. And I had to admit, the initial feeling had been one of exhilaration, flying so high, seeing the vibrant colours, seeing so much more. I could feel the wind rush through my (its?) feathers, as we swooped down towards our prey.

Then it struck me. It had been a “we” as in, two minds sharing the same body. Not just me dreaming I was a bird but sharing a totally immersive experience with the owl. I was sort of assuming it was an owl at this point, as it had definitely been a bird of prey, and being night-time that made sense. It also just felt right. More than that, I was almost certain it had been a barn owl. Again, it just felt right. I had caught the odd glimpse of wing feathers and outstretched talons in my (our) peripheral vision, but nothing to definitively identify it. I just knew. That then raises the existential question, does a barn owl know its a barn owl? While pondering this particular conundrum, I felt myself drifting back towards the land of Morpheus. I did not resist its pull. There were still another six hours until daylight and the rude intrusion of my alarm clock, so I went. I went back.

There was little realisation of becoming one with the owl, I became aware I was experiencing things from a different perspective, but it was also as if I had always been there. My memories of “before” were there, but unimportant, meaningless to me (us) now. So, I focused on the now. Life was thrilling. I (we) were flying high up in the night sky, occasionally catching a thermal and gliding effortlessly for great distances. Our (my) belly felt full, the owl had obviously fed more since my last visit, if that’s what this was, and not just a very realistic dream. Being more aware of my situation, I turned my thoughts to the creature whose body I now shared. Could I communicate with it? From what little I had experienced so far; our consciousness was very separate. I tentatively reached out with my mind, thinking of our joint experience, and felt something reaching back. But the thoughts I briefly saw were so alien and angular, juxtaposed to my own, I snapped my thoughts back. At this second, the owl let out an ear-piercing squawk and dove towards the ground. Like some Avian Kamikaze pilot, it (we) plummeted like a stone, and I watched with increasing terror as the black tarmacked surface of a road rushed towards me (us).

I sat up in bed screaming, arms across my face for protection. Gradually the terror subsided as I realised, I was awake again, back in my own body. I lay back down, consciously trying to slow my breathing and gradually my pulse rate slowed. What had just happened? It was the same as before, but this time it was like we had both become aware of each other. And neither had liked what they saw. I had been terrified, but now this was being overtaken with concern, had the owl survived its crazy dive? And if not, had I been the cause of its suicide mission, the answer to which I was almost certain was yes. In all of this, the one question that had only just occurred to me was why? Surely this had to be just a very vivid dream, but it felt like so much more. And if it truly was real, how was this happening? My mind whirled with a thousand and one questions, but the foremost in my mind was, what happened next?

Trying to make your self go to sleep is like trying not to think of an elephant after someone has told you not to think of one. It is all but impossible. So, I tried to push this from my thoughts and think of more mundane day to day things. I was in around about the sixth aisle of my local supermarket, making a virtual shopping list of things I needed in my mind, when once again, I was back with the owl. But this time it was different. Now I could feel more than before, the wind rushing through tawny feathers, the taste of… something in our beak. I could see more from the owl’s point of view, as if we had more fully merged this time. I felt the same alien resistance as before, trying to push me out, but less forceful. I knew where we were going, mostly in flashing images rather than words or a description. It was a nest in a hollow, high up in an old tree. There was another barn owl sitting on some eggs, waiting patiently, aware we were coming with food for her. Then I saw the tree from our memories, and we effortlessly landed on the rim of the hollow and stepped inside.

We passed the vole that had been dangling from our beak to the female and she swallowed it greedily. That was what I had tasted but had been too wrapped up in this new experience to fully register. But I felt no disgust, or abhorrence this time, just a need to protect and feed our mate. Then an image of my house, my home flashed into our mind and immediately we both knew this was my nest, my sanctuary. The female owl had finished her meal and was now staring at us with her head cocked to one side, almost quizzically. I felt us communicate with her, some kind of basic telepathy and she saw her mate was not alone. With a deafening screech, she came at us, talons forward. I could sense the overwhelming instinct to protect her brood emanating from her, and nothing else. Desperately we scrambled backwards, near falling from our roost and taking flight out into the night sky.

We circled for a while, angry and confused and I could a growing force trying to drive a wedge between our psyches and push me out. At that point I wanted nothing more than to return to my own body or wake up out of this growing nightmare. An image of my house came into our mind again, then one of my sleeping body, lying rigid amongst crumpled sheets. The bird swooped around in large arc and before long the lights of our little village came into view. I recognised local pub and the memorial statue in the town square. Some how this creature was homing in on my thoughts, using my own mind as a beacon to find my location. It wanted revenge. Revenge for my invasion into its thoughts and revenge for his mate’s rejection, for his loss. I desperately focused on my sleeping body, as the owl circled and criss-crossed the sky, trying to pinpoint my thoughts. I began trying to calm myself, as impossible as that seemed, and revisited my virtual supermarket, running through my shopping list, trying to concentrate on mundane human life.

I felt a wrenching tear echo through my head, then sat bolt upright in my bed once again screaming and crying. I felt exhausted, hollow, and strangely a profound sense of loss. Wearily I lay back down and turned my head towards my alarm clock; Just after six thirty in the morning. There seemed little point in remaining in bed, even though it was still dark, my alarm would be going off in less than half an hour. Deciding a shower might refresh me, I twisted to sit on the edge of my bed gathering my thoughts. Still gnawing at the edge of my thoughts was the oh so real nightmare that had plagued me all night. I could still feel the air blowing through my wing feathers, the taste of blood in my mouth. I turned towards the window, wondering, hoping that if I looked out, I might see a flash of white feathers on the underside of a wing reflecting the moonlight. Nervously, I grabbed the draw string which raised the roller blind and yanked it open.

I stared long and hard into the night sky. Searching for some movement, some sign. Then the smallest silhouette traversed across the moon, and suddenly we were connected. I staggered and lent hard against the windowsill, as our thoughts flickered across one another. But it was different this time. My vision flickered in a kaleidoscope of images, me looking up at the owl, them him looking down at me. It strobed with an almost epilepsy inducing speed, impossible to separate, like frames in a high-speed video. I saw myself swooping towards me, homing in on the window. I saw myself in the window below, staring up, awaiting my arrival. We became closer and closer, rushing towards the inevitable, finally, truly becoming, unique.