I've had some interesting experiences lately I'd like to share.  Here's one that was a bitter-sweet surprise.

One morning while leaving for work at 5:30 a.m. I hit a bird with my car.  I felt awful.  I couldn’t swerve into the lane next to me because there was a car beside me, and I put the brakes on but not soon enough to avoid hitting him.  It was one of those situations where a bird was sitting on the road and got startled and started to fly upward as I approached.  But as he left the ground, and as I put on the brakes, he wasn't able to fly out of my path quickly enough and he smacked into my windshield.  It was very quick and there was an awful thud.  He bounced off the top of my car and I quickly looked into my rear-view mirror and saw the bird roll off the right-hand side of the car, fumble to the ground, and land on his feet.  He did this funny little thing of shaking his head, and it was as if he shuddered his shoulders and fluffed his wings.  His eyes had a surprised look to me.  The expression on his face seemed to be saying, "Whoa, that was close!  But I'm ok."  Of course I was so happy that I hadn't killed him.  I don’t even have the heart to kill a bug!   

I continued on to work, but all day through my shift I thought about the bird and the funny expression on his little face.  I began to wonder what made it possible for me to feel like I was receiving so much information about his expression.  It was so early in the morning and not yet very light at 5:30, so it seemed unusual that I was able to see him fall, land, and do his funny little “shake-it-off” feather fluff, but my visual awareness of him was so clear and vivid.  I kind of just attributed it to my soft-hearted nature and love of animals as if I’m just more easily in tune to them than most people. 

I left work at 5 p.m. and headed out to my car.  As I got closer I saw something on top of the car.  It looked like a bird’s wing.  My heart skipped a couple beats as I realized the bird must have been very injured and lost a wing!!  I was so upset.  I hurried, got closer, and realized I had to open the door and step onto the door frame in order to see the top of my mini van.  Once I got up there, it wasn’t just the bird's wing I saw, it was the whole bird.  He was dead, wedged under the rack on top of my car.  For a few moments I was so confused.  I know I saw him bounce off the car and land on the grass.  Could it have been another bird that I saw?  I guess that was possible, but the whole thing happened so fast, and I could have sworn that the tumbling bird I saw after the thud was the bird I'd just collided with. 

I felt so bad about killing the bird and not having known he was up on my car, stuck, dying.  I even wondered that if I had not believed I'd seen him land on the grass I might have stopped the car, saw him stuck there, and perhaps could have helped him.  All I could have done at that point was to get him down and lay him on the grass, but it would have been better than it being stuck on my car all day in the hot sun.  Who knows how quickly or how long it took him to die.  I felt so awful about it.  At that point I just hoped he had died immediately on impact.

I had a plastic bag in my car, so I put the bird inside it, wrapped it up, and took him home to dispose of.  On the drive home (yes I cried a little, I'm such a softie) I kept re-playing in my mind what I'd seen, what my impression was of his expression, and wondered if the bird I saw on the grass was just a different yet identical bird.  Of course that was possible, but I couldn't deny all the impressions I'd received.  Then the possibility dawned on me that I had seen the same bird, but what I'd seen was his spirit after death just reacting as if he'd had a close call.  I loved the idea!  It certainly made me feel better, and it meant he had indeed died on impact rather than suffered for hours. 

When I shared this story with Bruce he said I shouldn't doubt my impressions of the bird's bewildered reaction.  He said, "Perhaps small creatures such as birds don't notice a transition when they die.  Maybe to them nothing different has happened, and they just naturally move onto wherever they go.  Maybe that's why his reaction was the way it was."   

I really do believe what I saw and my impressions of it.  The whole sequence of it, with seeing the bird bounce off the car and flop over the side and land, making his little shuffle of relief really was unmistakable.  Receiving the impressions of his feelings and reaction was so effortless, and I think that's a big key in recognizing the use of nonphysical senses.  I think we too often assume everything we experience is a physical experience, but from my myriad of strange experiences I know for a fact that the physical and nonphysical worlds are always engaged in one another. 

I’d love to hear what you think of this experience.

Vicky

Great story, Vicky.  I figured out what had happened in your first telling, but still almost cried when I read about your finding the bird on top of your car. 

It took me back to the saddest death of a bird I've experienced.  We had a parakeet that lived 9.5 years and survived three surgeries to remove a recurring fatty tumor before he died the day after the third surgery.   We buried him in a homemade wooden coffin.  Snowflake was such a wonderful pet; had the run (fly) of the house.

Pat E. wrote on Aug 21^st, 2010 at 2:04am:


Hi Pat,

Thanks.  Sorry to hear about your bird.  Yep I know all about that with a parakeet we had when we were just newly weds.  I hadn't thought of him in years, but now that you mentioned it I remember the huge tumors he had on his head.  I remember that the vet said "parakeets are tumor factories".  It was so sad to see.  We didn't give him any surgery, and I don't remember how long he lived. 

His name was Chubber Bailey, P.I.  We named him after a private investigator from a short story we wrote together.  Long story short, the "game" was to write a short story chapter, leave it as a cliff hanger with the main character in some peril, and then the other person takes over writing the next chapter and has to get him out of whatever harm's way you put him in.  Then he's put back in some life or death situation again and the story passes back to the first person again, and so on.  My ex and I had so much fun with that story.  So when we got the parakeet he became our story mascot!  I'm going to have to go dig in the garage tomorrow to find it.  What memories, thanks!  I'm sure my kids will get such a kick out of reading it.   

Hi Vicky,
when I read the details you saw of the bird behind your car after the collision, I thought "Vicky must have really good eyes" .

Well, could be it was another bird, but sounds not very probable to me, exactly at this point of time, behaving like the first bird could have.

I think the shock when you hit the bird could have loosened your focus on the physical, as you have the talent anyway, and when you looked for the bird behind your car your sight was an overlay of physical and nonphysical.

Spooky