Watch out — the seagull has landed!
NEVER MIND THE HEATWAVE DANGERS...
Have seagulls become more de-manding this year, or is it just me? The first sign that something was up came in January, when a customer in Greggs in ayr spotted a gull walking into the shop, helping himself to a packet of crisps and then walking out with no suggestion of paying.
Things really got going at the start of summer. On May 29, Belinda Leach, 55, took a series of photographs of a gull in her garden on the Isle of Man as it tried to swallow a whole dead rat.
after two attempts, the gull in question spent a few moments tend-erising the foot-long rat with its beak, and then managed to down it in one. a week later, over in Black-pool, Martin Farrington took video footage of a seagull marching through the door-way of his house and tucking into food he had put out for his pet cat.
It has since emerged that this gull is a repeat offender: according to Mr Farrington, he has been per-petrating this very same theft, on and off, for the past five years.
Then, on June 13, a jogger in Quebec posted a video of a gull swooping down and flying off with one of those annoying little cameras people stick on their heads. On the video, the jogger can be heard shouting ‘Give me my camera back!’ to the gull, obviously forgetting that the average gull’s command of english leaves much to be desired.
Six days later, back across the atlantic in Broadstairs, a panicky sunbather was forced to run for cover when a passive-aggressive flock of gulls surrounded her on the beach. In Broadstairs, of all places!
Meanwhile, in Tiverton, Devon, Jonathan Widdowson, a call-centre worker, is being regularly attacked. a dedicated Pokemon Go hunter, he is determined to track an errant Pokemon in St Peter’s churchyard, but keeps being dive-bombed by an angry gull. Perhaps it is jealous: Mr Widdowson has already reached an impressive level 40 at Pokemon Go.
Nor does it end there. During the course of a fortnight at the begin-ning of July, the local RSPCa in Taunton, Somerset, treated no fewer than 30 gulls that had passed out, ‘reeking of alcohol’, after lapping up too many half-finished glasses of beer and cider. One of these tanked-up gulls was spotted stumbling about this way and that on a rooftop, and concerned onlookers had called the emergency services. Unfortunately, the gull then had the bad manners to throw up over the poor firefighter who had come to its rescue. It’s all beginning to suggest that alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds was a documentary and not, as is commonly supposed, a work of fiction. My own experience suggests as much. I often stay just off Tottenham Court Road in Central London. In the spring, a seagull made its nest high up on the roof of a neighbouring block of flats. Recently, one of its overweight chicks — hardly any smaller than her mum — left the nest, and has been lumbering up and down the street on foot, either too fat or too lazy to fly. Meanwhile, its hyperactive helicoptering mum has taken to swooping down on any pedestrian who comes too close. These terrifying swoops will be familiar to anyone who has watched Tippi Hedren screaming her head off in The Birds. But, thankfully, some good has come out of it: neighbours and passers-by who have never spoken before have come together in a wartime spirit, united by a shared determination to keep calm and carry on.
WHO knows? In time, the entire street will have their courage rewarded by being invited to Downing Street to shake hands with Theresa May.
as it happens, I am writing this beside the sea in Suffolk, where for some time there has been sign posted on the beach wall saying that the maximum penalty for feeding the seagulls is £2,000.
This summer there are more seagulls than ever. Since last year, they have increased the accuracy of their airborne defecation, so much so that pedestrians have taken to wearing hats.
and their cunning has increased, too. The £2,000 maximum penalty sign is now almost wholly obscured by their sticky white mess.