Bird Nerd, Gull Girl

Today while I was walking on the beach I had gotten almost to Pierpont when I stopped and stood looking at the ocean. I turned to my right to look back up the beach. I had been thinking heavy thoughts, end of life thoughts. I saw a very white gull, a large one, flying towards me, right at me. When it got to around, say, 10 feet away, it stopped and hovered above me, like birds do when they’re hunting. Or, in the case of a gull, eyeing somebody’s shiny chip bag, or paper-wrapped sub. It was odd. The bird looked like it flew right TO ME. It kept hovering there, making me look down to see if I had anything it could have mistaken for food, anything shiny, or interesting. Nope. Nothing. This went on for several seconds and at one point it veered so closely I shrank in surprise. I imagined how those rubbery water-bird feet would feel on my shoulders. I've been bitten by several gulls in the process of capturing injured ones on the beach, usually with nothing but my hands,so that didn't scare me, but I reacted anyway, it was that close. It was definitely there because of me. 

Finally it decided to land about 10 feet away, facing me. I took a step slowly towards it to see what that would do, it turned to it’s right, unsure, and stopped. So I slowly stepped back, it stepped forward to face me. We stood there looking at each other, waiting for someone to do something,then the oddest thing happened. It leaned it’s head down to the ground, dropped a small object onto the damp sand jumped up and was gone in the next second no longer interested in me. I was so taken aback for a couple of seconds I stood there processing what had happened. Did this bird just give me a gift?? I stepped towards it and a shiny light pinged off of it. I walked to where it was and to my surprise, as I bent closer to see it, I discovered it was a shiny, red, glass bead. The kind that’s decorative, maybe to put into a vase. It immediately reminded me of my birthstone, Garnet. I picked it up. Still in disbelief. What a weird thing to have just happened. 

I looked for the bird, it was long gone. I turned back down the beach, walked several paces, then for no reason I turned BACK around, walked about 3 steps and what did I find? Another red glass bead. I had not seen that other one when I was walking just then, I even looked around as it seems to have appeared out of nowhere, dropped out of the sky. 

I have no idea what it means, but a bird gave me a bead today, picked me to give it to. it was the strangest animal encounter I have had in a very long time. Maybe ever.