I was lying

with my face against my arms, pressed into the sand, and my back to the sea, when from the corner of my right eye I saw, with disoriented vision, a seagull cautiously tiptoeing around a pile of seaweed a couple yards off. At first I took little notice, but the persistence and the caution of this seagull intrigued me--it was circling around what looked like silver-bleached piece of rounded driftwood that lay half obscured under the pile of stagnant seaweed and small cloud of flies. It would peck at it, and every couple of seconds turn to face me--eyeing me at regular intervals, as it sidestepped over and around this piece of driftwood.

After a minute or so, it began pecking at what appeared to be a hole in the wood, and a rather deep one at that; it would prod the hole with its beak, and turning its neck at any number of odd angles as attempted to peck into the hole from all angles. It continued doing this for some time, and although I was not sure what it was doing, I wanted to find out. I stood up, scaring the seagull off, and walked over to the mound. I was expecting to find a dead seagull perhaps, or maybe some food; perhaps i had mistaken a food carton for driftwood. But I was ruprised to find, instead, a dead sunfish, about 3 feet long, and nearly as high, half doused in sand, with its eye cavity entirely picked clean. Suddenly the seagulls movements made sense, as I looked into what had been the head cavity of this sunfish. The feeling was surreal; I felt as though I had stumbled upon the remains of some mythical creature, rejected by the deep, and exposed briefly to human eyes, before it would inevitably be swallowed by the sea once more. It was a nice reminder that even in the most regular of places, the unknown still lurks, if you're willing to look.