At the pinnacle of the pillage, a magpie evicted a bird out of a tree, squawking in chase, as the terrified bird smashed into one of our picture windows — a window usually displaying our gorgeous mountain view. Not that day. Instantaneously, the bird fell to the ground dead, and before I had time to dash out the door and pick it up, the magpie absconded with its body to a nearby tree for dinner.
After, Bob and I wandered the yard, stunned that a diversity of birds we’d helped cultivate over the years was wiped out in a single day by angry magpies. This hit close to home because the previous occupants of our home used to sit on the deck and shoot at, most likely, birds. When we first moved in, I dug bullets out of the deck floor and found shell casings underneath the deck. It didn’t take us long to understand why our property was so quietly void of birdsong. It was disorienting for us, having fully enjoyed the diverse bird sanctuary we’d created in Durango, Colorado, at our cabin. It took three years for the birds to fully return to our new property in Paonia.
So, the magpies’ violent eviction was a brutal return to a yard and trees lacking birds and birdsong. My precious flock of cooing doves that used to swirl in the driveway? Gone. The robins who joyfully bounced through the early morning dewed lawn for worms? Gone. The trilling meadowlarks? Moved off to adjacent fields. The warbling finches? Vanished. Even the sparrows disappeared. Fortunately, the intrepid hummingbirds persisted, swerving through space and avoiding the bird bullies. And the stealth owls and hawks stuck around as they trumped the magpies in size.
As COVID voluminously unfolded and we sank into quarantine, I grieved the loss of our birds at a time I needed them the most. And we were left with the melodic, rasping squawk of the determined magpie. For several weeks, I was so angry and hurt by the world of magpie justice that I waged war with them. I yelled at them. Chased after them. Encouraged the dogs to run them down. Threw rocks at them. But it was fruitless. They just mocked me from higher branches.
As news trickled through the neighborhood that the ravens had kicked the magpies out of their home, and we began to understand the larger picture, I calmed down. There was a reason for this temporary, heartbreaking insanity of a magpie takeover. In the wake of the destruction, I went to my bookshelf and referred to the sage advice about ravens and magpies by Ted Andrews in Animal Speak.
Both, of course, are extremely intelligent birds. Both are rooted from the same family of birds. What stood out to me about the magpie was their innate ability to scavenge. They clean things out when an old cycle is ending and a new one is beginning. They also hold deep occult magic. Hmm.
I hated to admit it, but the wildlife, like clockwork, was reflecting the symbolic harbinger of the great turning of our times. The magpies, as a Universal mirror, just showed my husband and me the great clearing and reset we were beginning to live in our lives on a planet in flux.
I spent that summer tolerating the magpies in our yard. It took months for them to relent. Eventually, I came to my own unsettled peace that even magpies need homes, too, and they do serve a greater purpose. They were doing what they had to do for their survival while symbolically reflecting the great reset in our lives.
And lo, this spring, after a year, more balance is returning to our yard with more birds peacefully coexisting here once again, even with the magpies. I’m heartened that the meadowlark are quite prolific, especially in voice, marking the heightened state of intuitive awakening — which is happening in our lives and around the planet.
As the bird drama rebalances in our lives, a new Universal mirror has appeared in our neighborhood: a black-and-white (tuxedo) border collie, one of the neighborhood dogs. He showed up a handful of days ago, running incessant laps in our neighbor’s open fields — running on a phantom purpose. Running hell-bent for leather along the endless interior of the fence line. Running, parrying on turns in the corners of the field like no other breed of dog does besides a herding dog. He’s running and running as nascent green alfalfa pops from the ground, ready for the fresh irrigation water that just trickled in last week. The water sends the entire neighborhood outdoors to work and open the water lines, shaking out the dead weeds and clotted dirt from ditches and pipes. This is our annual spring ceremony of the water blessing coming down from the mountains. We are so lucky for this sacred gift of flowing water.
As we worked out the water lines, networks of neighborhoods setting up the net of flowing water for the fields, this sweet black-and-white dog ran circles within the box of green fields.
As I watched this scene unfold for the first time during my morning meditation, his heats around the field, his paws barely hitting the earth, it all began to feel familiar. It’s as if I knew what he was doing because I, in the hollowed-out center of my core, felt like how he was running. Wrapped in my blanket in the chill spring air at dewpoint and frostline, holding my mug of tea, the sun readying to burst over Jumbo Mountain, I wondered, “What am I looking at? How am I seeing? What is this Universal mirror telling me?”
When the meaning rolled in, it came as a blow. “Oh Lord. I am looking at my life. I am stuck inside this box of quarantine, and the magpies have cleared out my life for a year, reducing me to as little as possible. And I’m really not able to go anywhere, do anything, or see anyone. The effort to build and recreate out of the rubble isn’t quite possible yet. And now I’m reduced to running empty phantom heats, turning in circles inside the box of my own making.”
The magnetic pull I felt between this dog and his run — and me and my life — buoyed me in sweet sorrow. The phantom laps we’re running in our lives aren’t quite over, but they can’t last forever.
Since that morning, I’ve learned that Tino is a two-year-old border collie. His owner’s older herding dog died, and Tino was meant to learn the herding trade and go to work to herd livestock. For whatever reason, two-year-old Tino didn’t make the connection, and he and his owner did not bond. And so, Tino, with the energy of a two-year-old border collie, runs his heats in the open neighborhood fields, the neighborhood network of us keeping an eye on him.
Even as my heart hurts for the missed connection between Tino and his owner, I can’t help but think that in the Universal mirror, we’re all living along the storylines of these ravens, magpies, and one sweet border collie. We were evicted out of our old lives a year ago, and we were turned upside down. Then, our nests and eggs of dreams, rhythms, and projects were repetitively cleared, destructively dumped to the ground, with one old story after another dying in the chaos of a grueling year. Though the new story is trying to arrive, peeking its nascent green tendrils from the earth as we line up the water pipelines to feed the earth with mountain water — it’s not all quite connected yet. And so, we are running our passionate phantom heats of purpose in our hearts, our souls, like a sweet black-and-white dog trying to locate his connection. A connection that keeps vaporizing in the heat of the morning sun – as his breath, sinew, bone and blood lightly sail over the earth in his prayer of faith and redemption.
Dana Stovern is founder and coach of The Magic of Somatic Money, and author of the blog Along the Learning Curve of Life. Even though her profession is body-based money relationship coaching, her first love is words, writing and exploring the depths of the human conscious (or unconscious) condition in body and soul development.