The night before last I dreamt I was being swooped by a magpie as I made my way through some sort of park.
This was quite upsetting, not because of the physical danger but because I've never been swooped by a magpie and was annoyed to have my track record broken - so many people whinge about magpies and talk up the threat posed to them, I've always felt somewhat superior.
Anyway, at first the thing just sorta went gliding languidly past me, quite close but I still wasn't alarmed. Then it went back for another charge, and this time I realised without a doubt that the unthinkable had happened and this magpie actually
was swooping me. And it was determined.
So I was forced to duck, sidestep and even dive to the ground on at least one occasion as this demented bird trying to bury its beak in my head.
After being harassed by a while I dodged away from its latest swoop and continued on my way, trying to actually make some progress before its next onslaught - when I realised that it in fact
hadn't swooped past me normally, but was in fact hovering a little way behind me in an impressive display of aerial acrobatics!
Before I could adjust my own tactics to counter the beastly bird's dogfighting skills it darted forward and jabbed its beak viciously into my scalp, tearing out a small-but-not-insignificant chunk of flash.
It hurt. It hurt, and I worried what kind of disfigurement the damn thing had just caused me.
Somehow though, I managed to catch the magpie before it could dart away again - this was one guerilla assault it wouldn't be escaping unscathed from. I was pretty mad, what with the physical injury and pain now added to the embarrassment and disappointment of being swooped by a magpie, and decided to break its neck to avenge my beak-battered bonce.
However this proved quite difficult even once I'd fully committed my strength to this murderous impulse (I presume this scene was based on that one time a friend of mine attempted to break a pigeon's neck - it had been mauled by a cat, 'twas a mercy killing - and discovered the deed to be far trickier than expected even after googling a guide on just how to do so), I yanked and twisted its head this way and that without much noticeable effect, then decided in mounting frustration to just generally scrunch the thing up.
I bent its back the wrong way, doing my best to break it down the middle. This sort of thing continued for a while.
Don't think I achieved any clean breaks, but eventually I deemed the bird sufficiently mangled, tossed what was left of it into a gully or ditch, and woke up.
Was quite an odd dream indeed. Not sure if there was more to it.
Might have been inspired by the usual springtime flood of magpie mames on the Australian bits of the interwebs. *shrug*
Small winged monster of a species that terrorises Australia during the springtime attacked me, despite my lifelong truce with the creatures, and was scrunched up and thrown in a ditch for its trouble.