Moving Orange ball that changed directions

I was outside in my backyard having a cigarette and as I usually do whilst having a night time cigarette is look at the stars. I was looking east and it seemed to appear out of nowhere a bright orange/red ball it was shaped kind of like the emblem they use for the internet browser FIREFOX and it was the same kind of orange they use at the bottom part of he emblem. This ball like object was moving in an easterly direction across the sky about the same height as you would see the planes coming in from here that are coming in to land. I believe it was quite large as it looked around the size of a full moon when it is at its highest point. I could not tell what speed this thing was going but it was moving quite erratically and I watched it for maybe 40 seconds to a minute. I had my phone in my hand and was actually trying to load up a online poker game and upon seeing this orange ball I tried to stop the poker from loading so I could use the camera/video on the phone. As I was doing this the object seemed to change direction and seemed to be heading north and looked as though i was heading straight towards me and looked as though it was getting closer and closer to me. I finally got the poker to stop loading and switched on the video/camera as this thing was getting closer to me and It is probably my own paranoia of the unknown but I felt as though this thing had seen me I also had a fairly bright light shining into the backyard that lights up about half the yard. I actually feel quite frightened so I stepped out of the light and squatted down in the dark just in case it was some kind of extraterrestrial and it may be just a coincidence but as soon as I started trying to film this thing it changed direction back to the east and seemed to move faster than it was before but this time as it was moving east and sill very erratic (kind of like a fish swimming) it suddenly had a bright white or yellow zig zagging like long tail that looked like a lightning bolt. I believe the tail looked as though it was zig zagging because of its erratic movement. it was still about the height of the airplanes you see around here and It seemed like this thing was trying not to be filmed as it headed straight for cloud cover once it got into the cloud I got a couple of more glimpses then did not see it again. The entire incident lasted only around 40-60 seconds. Unfortunately even though I did try to get some video evidence on my phone it started moving to fast for me to line it up with the video camera, it would of actually been nice to have got some evidence of this event. Even though logic tells me this was probably a meteorite it did not appear at anytime to look as though it was heading towards the ground and although I have never seen a meteorite before or know anything at all about the way it moves, I do find it strange that it felt like this thing was not wanting to be filmed and that it seemed to get faster and suddenly got the zig zagging tail in which was not there before that.
Did anybody else see this or seen anything similar ? I would be really interested in what your opinion is on this. I also have a few questions as in.....Do meteorites change direction like I described ? Can they suddenly appear to have a tail when it did not have one at first ? and can it be hard to tell if they are actually descending or not ? I would appreciate your opinions as it was quite a spectacular thing to see and has got me very curious you may be able to help me solve the mystery to what it actually was ?