BIRD!

Sometimes, I get a little uneasy around birds. Once, when I was just a boy, I was eating a delicious cinnamon pretzel in Disney World. It was the perfect food at that instant; chewy and filling, covered in a cinnamon glaze, the perfect snack after a hard day of walking around and riding Space Mountain. I had that one first divine bite, the kind of bite that overwhelms your senses, causes your eyes to roll back in your head, and all you want to do is cram that entire pretzel down your gullet as fast as you possibly can.

It was then, while I was in the rapture of this delicious pretzel, that a SWARM of seagulls descended upon me. It was a scene straight out of The Birds. They were swooping and diving with an utter disregard for me, any other humans, or their own safety. My dad knocked one out of the air, sending it crashing to the ground. In the midst of this, one of the seagulls swooped down, flew close enough by my head that I could FEEL it, and snatched the pretzel right out of my hand. In doing so, he became too heavy to fly and crashed about 10 feet in front of us. The swarm redirected their attack, and the thieving seagull was stuck in the middle of a seagull feeding-orgy. I'm not sure he even made it out alive.

So nowadays, when I see a menacing bird who has clearly had a run-in with the law before (why else would he have a numbered shackle on his leg if he wasn't a common criminal???) I get nervous. "Hey, @julielyda," I''ll say, "Hold this pretzel for me, would you?"