“’Ask him, Alexandra, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I have heard so.’
    She had some difficulty in making the old man understood.
    He looked puzzled at first, then smote his hands together as he remembered. ‘Oh, yes, yes! A big white bird with long wings and pink feet. My! what a voice she had! She came in the afternoon and kept flying about the pond and screaming until dark. She was in trouble of some sort, but I could not understand her. She was going over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far it was. She was afraid of never getting there. She was more mournful that our birds here; she cried in the night. She saw the light from my window and darted up to it. Maybe she though my house was a boat, she was such a wild thing. Next morning when the sun rose, I went out to take her food, but she flew up into the sky and went on  her way.’ Ivar ran his fingers through his thick hair. ‘I have many strange birds stop with me here. They come from very far away and are great company. . . .’”

—Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, 1913.