I'm smarter when I'm sleeping

Like most of you, I love music. Sometimes one particular song keeps playing over and over in my head.

The Police were one of the best bands of the '80s and they had loads of great songs.

King Of Pain is one of my favorites.

The lyrics are very distinctive, almost like a nursery rhyme:

There's a little black spot on the sun today

It's the same old thing as yesterday

There's a black cat caught in a high tree top

There's a flag-pole rag and the wind won't stop

What's it about?

Beats me... but despite the upbeat melody there seems to be an underlying theme of death and decay:

There's a fossil that's trapped in a high cliff wall

There's a dead salmon frozen in a waterfall

There's a blue whale beached by a spring tide's ebb

There's a butterfly trapped in a spider's web

ANYHOO...

I knew the lyrics but never really thought about them.

There's this one particular line in the last verse:

There's a red fox torn by a huntsman's pack

A huntsman's pack? In my mind's eye, I could picture a red fox, somehow getting entangled in a hunter's shoulder bag, and getting mangled in the process -- what the hey, Sting's got quite an imagination.

Anyway, so one time I was sleeping, right?

And in my sleep I had a dream. And in my dream King Of Pain was playing.

I've stood here before inside the pouring rain....

Then I awoke.

Aha. 

In my dream I had understood -- a huntsman's pack is a pack of dogs.

(Duh!)