Man, don’t *I* feel late…
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Since January of 2004 (last year as of this posting), I’ve been on a constant soul search as far as my therianthropy is concerned. It’s been far from mind at times, but never far from heart or soul. Many call it a fursona, others a phenotype, and still others an animal totem.

Well, whatever it is, I’ve been trying to see it for what it is, or whatever form it may take. And as of Halloween 2005, I’ve gone one big step further in that direction.

I’ve switched from the snow leopard (panthera uncia) to the eagle (Falconiformes).

The reasons:

1) I see myself as an eagle.

Not in the “oh, I can CP/RP as an anthropomorphic eagle” or “eagles are my favorite animals!” ways….I mean, seriously, I’ve never had that much respect for the eagle species, let alone any fascination with it. I sharply remember (with chagrin) that the eagle is the symbol of my Mom’s church; the reverend of the church has long been fond of the eagle, as he continues to show to this very day in his sermons (at least the last time that I was down in WR; his “Eagle Series” of sermons was first preached back around the turn of this century, if I remember correctly). I came to resent the eagle as a result of all of this; to me, it was a fitting symbol of that church (and all the others like it, too): haughty, infatuated with prosperity and the divine provision of such, always aiming to trample (not soar above….TRAMPLE) the others who were not willing to go along that route (or at least either appeal to Our Heavenly Father to do so for them or simply deride them as being remnants of the “Old Man” exterior which they were trying to shed…or at least force the others to do as well). Plus, eagles have long been associated with US patriotism and imperialism (both at home and abroad), but then you should already know that.

Thus, eagles were never within my daily consideration, save for those two-day fascinations with my Native American (Blackfoot) ancestry (via my mother’s father’s father) in which I continued to see the word “eagle” and the image thereof imprinted upon my eyes, at which point the fling usually ended.

Basically, I can’t exactly recall how the eagle came to me on Sunday night-Monday morning (I’ll probably remember it later). What I do remember is that I told both androgynism and drake_tigerclaw on Google Talk about it later on Monday (around the same time that I posted it here).

What I do remember is that I didn’t leap upon it immediately after it showed. I also remember that I wasn’t visiting any eagle-related websites at the time; actually, due to my sporadic ponderings following a tiny little incident on MSN with a certain tiger from London, ONT (not naming names, alright?), I was figuring that maybe I wasn’t really a snow leopard (or, for that matter, any type of feline)…..OK, that may have been it.

The incident with the guy on MSN led me to uninstall MSN from my hard drive earlier in the week (long prior to me having to resort to the computers in Goodman), among other “useless” software that I no longer felt a need for (they’re merging their protocol with Yahoo next summer, anyway, so the hell with it). Furthermore, also a result of the same matter, I began to take a retrospective look at the last year that I had spent online. I looked at what I could pull up of the image which I had exuded to others on this plane for all that time. And, of course, I explored how I had felt at every particular point about it, how I had acted towards others, the way that I’ve been to you all.

Then, I was starting to figure that, judging from how I have always been as a person, how I’ve always related to others (even on an offline basis), and the way I think about life in general, maybe the snow leopard image wasn’t something that I could exude at all…..honestly speaking, I now know for certain that I have never exuded any felinity, not even from January of 2004 or beforehand.

I’m not a snow leopard in any shape or form, not even in the slightest-possible sense.

I’ve never even felt the snow leopard as being a core contingent of my soul or body at any time in my lifetime.

Was this self-deception or delusion? Nah, although it does initially seem that way.

Is this something that I’m just jumping on only to get off later? I doubt it.

My fursona/phenotype/totem being an eagle is something that, to be honest, I don’t want to consider. I mean, the snow leopard is something that I’d want to cling to, albeit less and less so. However, I’m not keen towards the eagle because of the aforementioned associations which I hold it in.

Since at least Monday, primarily for curiosity, I’ve been imagining myself with an orange-yellow beak protruding from my face…….now the image has been stuck with me on a perpetual basis.

So…do I like being an eagle?

Not right now, I don’t.