The doors of perception: snakes and pregnant ladies

     I've had a thing for animals my whole life.  A kinship, maybe.  My older brother grew up afraid of the forest.  Afraid of getting lost.  Afraid of beetles and slugs and gray, featherless, baby birds.  Afraid of dirt. 
     I grew up deathly afraid of my older brother.
     So all the dirt and the beetles and the baby birds were on my side.  I spent so long hiding just inside that treeline that I eventually trained a chipmunk to eat peanuts from my hand.

     The universe loves me, but thinks I'm stupid.  I say this because I seem to get really obvious signs.  Always have.  Unmistakable signs.  Signs only an idiot would ignore.
     True to form, I mostly ignore them.  Like the time a coyote walked right up to me.  Or the time a luna moth landed on my hand. 
 
     But I guess sometimes the time is right. 

     My dog died when I was 8 months pregnant. 
     That night, I had a dream that there was a man standing in my backyard.  A homeless man, I thought.  He didn't seem dangerous.  But he wasn't safe, either.  He was just there.  And he was wearing shiny, black, snakeskin pants.

     When I woke up to let the other dog outside, she barked.  And pounced.  And there it was: a real snake in the backyard.  Right where the man in my dream had been standing.  A long black snake. 

     When I was pregnant, I suddenly started noticing pregnant women all over the place.  So many pregnant women!  It's like somebody switches on a special light and suddenly your perception shifts and you are able to notice this thing you never did.  It's the same with the spirit animals.  Once you start seeing them, you see them everywhere.

     My father died a little over a year ago.  The morning after seeing him wheeled out, my first glimpse of waxy dead feet; my mother and I sat on the screen porch in that weird state of grieving shock. 

     My mom said she was worried.  We are all atheists from a long line of non-believers, but we are people with spirit.  My mother had opened a window for my father's ghost to get out of the house.  She didn't like the idea of him bouncing around in there all freed from his body.  She worried that she should have opened all the windows, that he wouldn't find just the one.  He was never very detail oriented.

     Just as she finished saying it, a great long black snake slithered out from under the porch.  He stopped, raised his head, and turned to look right at us. "Oh, there he goes." She said, so calmly, and took a drag from her cigarette.  "He found it."

     Two important deaths.  Two snakes.  And so started my obsession with reading animal signs. Which maybe the universe has been asking me to do for a very long time.  But thankfully, the universe persists.  Because we both know I'm stupid.
 

Back in the saddle

Saturday night the beasts were out in full force.  I had a few helpers and managed to get a little pig up on stage at the Infamous Stringdusters show.  He's there, hiding by the wires.

Also slipped a handsy owl in an open purse-- not sure the woman had owl magic... likely not as she was wearing a hat that said "fuckin wasted" (and nope, it was not her birthday.  I asked.)-- seems not very owl-like.  But she had spunk.  And an open purse. 

Got the little bee in some dread's open coat pocket.  It was a stealth maneuver.  But she seemed like a bee.  So that was a good one. 

All in all a good rainy Saturday night.