Okay so without going to far into the details of this dream I had last night, here are the big points and where the animals came in.

You all watch the show heroes, I presume? If you don't, you live under a rock. It's the only thing I watch on TV, but anyway, last night my dream started as me, and then I became first Nathan Patrelli, then Peter Patrelli through the course of the dream.

I flew out over the ocean, fast and far enough to fly clear into the night, I got the impression I was flying east to get away from the day light. I flew out over a storm, like a hurricane, and there was thunder and lightning. THen, for some reason I seemed to lose my nerve, and I fell out of the sky. I landed among some rocks, and had to climb over them to find shelter. I tried to fly again, but couldn't for some reason. So, I was climbing across these rocks and there was a sort of muddy beach there at their base where I was trying to find like a cave or something to wait out the storm in (I had fallen kind of through it). As I made my way across the mud, there were hermit crabs everywhere, like thousands of them. THey pinched my toes, and I had to start sweeping them aside literally by the hundreds as they covered the mud.

Eventually I waited out the storm, some other details that I understood perfectly well went by, and then after changing perspectives to Nathan, and then to Peter, as peter something happened and I woke up. I went almost right back to sleep though, and the story picked up as though I had just disappeared from it and then reappeared some several hours later. Now I was in my apartment, but as Peter Patrelli. There was a faceless woman (which is to say, I didn't identify her -as- anyone, it was just some generic woman but I got the sense she was young) who was at my window. She pointed out of it and mentioned the spiders spinning their webs, and how it was beautiful. I went to look, and there were little spiders there spinning those classic circular webs. But then I saw other spiders, like I suddenly noticed they were there, not spinning webs but kind of hanging around, and they were much bigger, like the size of your head big. They moved a little and I saw them, but then I noticed even bigger spiders, and these had already caught something - baby bears - and were eating them very graphically. These were like, spiders the size of a ten-year-old, with huge mandibles that were tearing the flesh off of the baby bears bit by bit as they sat contently in this tree munching away.

The rest of the dream was more normal, and I understood all the events as they symbolized elements of my life now, but I have never been to good with animal symbolism, especially when I interact with it so much over the course of the dream, and when the animals interact with one another that way.

I know that Spiders represents the weavers, those who make illusions, and so symbolize creativity and creation, and that bears represent judgement, wisdom, and practicality, at least as far as I have ever heard - they've never been a symbol in my dreams before - and while spiders have, I've never seen them interacting with other symbols, and hermit crabs I've also never seen, and also never heard anything about. To have them in my dreams was kind of odd it seems like. I used to collect them at the beach as a child, if it makes a difference to anyone's opinions.

So any thoughts on the animal symbolism and what it might suggest? Greatly appreciated, I typically do okay interpreting dreams and sometimes even have an interpreter in the dream with me, but he was no where to be found last night...

peace