First, I was playing some bizarre
video game that had weird levers that flipped candy (like the kind you find in those "play until you win"
candy crane games) - you had to flip handfuls of candy at the screen to destroy the hordes of oncoming
zombies - and you had to be working another control to load the candy into the firing arm. Very complicated. I don't think it would sell - but the candy reward concept was neat. Somehow a bird got trapped inside the candy section. This is where the dream changed.
Suddenly I was at some sort of a zoo / aviary. There were birds mostly (some other things to, but the birds were the interesting thing). I had to get that bird out of there, so I tried to get some help from some animal friends of mine - but when we got back to the cage, the woodthrush was gone. It had been moved into another cage for woodthrushes. And it didn't want to leave - it had a friend, and seemed happy. That's when I noticed other birds flying in the sky - brightly coloured (mostly red, but blue and a little yellow) birds with huge fan tails - almost as big as peacocks. They were sailing very high up, but circling to land. One landed very close to me, a very small one - about the size of a sparrow, and ended up crawling under my hand for some reason. Suddenly I realized it was burning my hand. I jerked my hand away and I had a first degree burn - red skin, no blisters. That's when we realized that they were phoenixes. "That's impossible," I said, "They're extinct!" Well, I guess they weren't that extinct after all.... This is about when I woke up.