A little down feather tale

A while ago my dog has been given a feathered duvet by my sweet French neighbour. The duvet is at least 80 years old my neighbour told me. Nothing more warm, light, soft and insulation than down feathers. The softest down feathers that keep the baby birds warm and comfee. Nature knows best how to dress it's creatures comfortably.
The duvet is in Karims' dog hut in the barn, it's his comfortable warm nest. The nest needs lots of my dogs effort in pulling and digging to get it in the position of his bed in the way he likes best, like some dogs do. But he has huge claws and this week he ripped the duvet apart and in the morning I saw Karim coming out of his hut as if it had been snowing inside it. Down feathers coming out of his nostrils and sticked in the corners of his eyes.
I had to clean his hut thoroughly and so to shake out I took the duvet and the other blankets outside. While shaking out clouds of down feathers swirled around me. My thoughts suddenly were with all the geese, chicken and ducks that 80 years ago had suffered, lots probably slaugthered for the making of this marvelous insulating duvet.
Then I thought about all the duvets and all the lives and suffering that it costs to make them.

While the down feathers swirled and swirled I had the feeling of doing a ritual in which I freed all the birds that once were the owners of this plumage. A friend told me not long ago that he thought of angels when he saw a down feather, thinking about what he had said made my feeling during this ritual even more magical and intens.

I was so happy and so surprised when next morning while looking out of the kitchen window I saw tits with their beaks stuffed with yesterdays (.. like 80 year old) down feathers. The birds were flying onto the roof to build their nests, yes spring is in the air.
I was moved because now the liberating-the-death ritual that I had performed was transformed by in a ritual of giving life. By birds nota bene!

All is perfect as it is I felt.
Magical liberating momentum.

Same day in the evening I red that it had been World Pillow Fighting day. I saw images of 'fighting' people in Amsterdam and New York surrounded by clouds of swirling down feathers. As before I would have considered it wast full to all the suffering these birds had to encounter for our comfortable sleep, now I looked at it and knew soon birds in these big cities would build comfortable warm nests for their babies with the use of these down feathers.
What a magical symbol to see these offered lives honored by being used in the ritual of the birth of birds. Free birds!
Free ALL
ALL