9. Fox 
Walking up to our front door, we come upon a dead yellow-shafted flicker lying on the ground. Its presence there is a mystery, since our cats are indoors and there is nothing for the bird to fly into above where it is lying. But we accept it as a gift, for use of its feathers. We have not, however, plucked a whole bird before, and we don't feel up to dealing with it right now. So we put it in the basement, fully intending to remove the feathers tomorrow. Several days pass.
We have a dream. We meet an old friend outside a movie theater. She says it's about time we do something with that flicker, since it is beginning to stink. So, in this dream, we go down to the basement and clip the flicker's wings and de-feather it. We notice nothing unusual during this process, but when finished, we see a spot of blood in the palm of our left hand. We think that this is peculiar, not having seen any blood from the bird. Then we realize that the blood is from our own nose. We think: this is just like what happened at South Hill. We awaken.
Two years prior to this dream we are on an outing to explore South Hill, a place overlooking Canadaigua Lake, which several sources refer to as the birthplace of the Seneca Nation. We are there two or three hours and are returning to the car, scattered around a big field. We are walking through a patch of tall grasses and suddenly come upon a bare spot of earth that has a collection of small bones in it. We lean down to examine the bones, pick up one or two of them, and our nose starts to bleed all over the pile. We don’t have a cold. We haven’t bumped our nose on anything. We haven’t had a nose bleed for years. This is the incident referred to in the flicker dream.
The day after our dream, we do indeed take care of the flicker. Because of the dream, we are careful to observe whether or not there is any bleeding. We see none. But when we finish clipping its wings and de-feathering it, we notice a patch of blood in the palm of our right hand. The blood is not from our nose, but a close reexamination of the bird reveals that there is a bit of blood coming from its nostrils.