…and what a better day than January 19th? Edgar Allen Poe’s birthday which, as you’ve probably read, is still honoured every year by the Poe Toaster who visits his grave in Baltimore with roses and a bottle of cognac. Today should be Halloween II.
Besides it being dreary outside which doesn’t say much for spooky in Vancouver, why is today so spooky? Well…I’ve been having the weirdest dreams. I had a nap in the late afternoon - quite a long one. In my sleep, a portion of my dream had me in the backyard of my home in Regina but the backyard being itself before the renovations. I went to the far edge of the yard to where a little shed used to sit. There were some crows and sparrows doing their bird things around me. When I turned around to go back to the house, I was completely surrounded by various birds. Large birds. I could identify the crows and sparrows, some ravens (I think…they looked like massive crows), and a few ivory-billed woodpeckers. They were all looking at me. They were giving me that “so…what are you going to do now?” look. I was frozen in that moment and while the distance between me and the back door seemed infinite, the hanging tree boughs, weighed down with the rows of fat birds, made the yard claustrophobically small. I remember taking one step forward, really the only step I could take without running into birds, and there was some ruffling of feathers as all birds shifted their glances slightly to continue watching me. I think I woke up from this one or I switched the dream channel cause it was way to spooky for me.
The dream makes sense given its certain influence. Before napping, I was reading the “Year in Science” issue of Discover magazine. They mentioned two breakthroughs of 2005 - the return of the ivory-billed woodpecker after 60 years of presumed extinction and the growing evidence that birds are much more intelligent then we thought.


The dream marks something else for me - the first time ever that I’ve thought of birds as spooky even though they’ve always graced Halloween decorations and various tales of macabre. The human-bird-weird thing goes way way way way back. I think I can finally understand. At the same time, my curiosity of our feathered friends has certainly been ignited.