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Drop your hot dog in the town square and the five second rule will do you no good. A seagull's probably got it within two seconds. It's likely one's been hovering over you watching your every movement with his hawk eyes ever since he first spotted you with your arms full trying to stuff your lunch into your mouth. They're said to be the smartest of birds, and they're focused like you wouldn't believe. Precisely at the moment of the drop one drives down straight and fast and zappo, the bird and your lunch are up on the ledge of a nearby building . Hey, schrug it off, hot dog vendors are very familiar with seagulls and how they are, the guy will probably give you another one.
Most of the gulls you see in the northeast where I live are imaginatively called Large White-Headed Seagulls, differentiated from the smaller variety found in less consequential places I guess. They're officially known as ' ground nesting carnivores' which, to me, means that they are a land animal that can fly. Which is what most of us would go for if given the choice. Seagulls are also among the most long-lived creatures on earth, one having been known to live for forty-nine years. So some of the ones you see hanging around the square could be the same ones that were there in the 1960's. Very cool.
Seagulls ' demonstrate complex methods of communication and live according to a highly developed social structure', so that means they can talk and in different ways, depending on who they're talking to and what they want to say. Like us. Only their voices carry a little further.
Another characteristic of seagulls is that they're mobile from birth, which means that they don't hang around the nest for very long the way most other birds do. Soon after the egg cracks they're up and flying gracefully and powerfully , and before long they've learned to suspend themselves in the air then swoon off into the soft blue with the slightest tip of a wing.
We all know that seagulls are protected by Federal law. But it's not because they're scarce, that's for sure. It's because they eat many times their weight everyday in stuff that would otherwise bring disease and pestilence to us humans. It's not a good idea to mistreat seagulls anyway. There's a lot more going on there then one might first imagine.
There would be no way to confirm it by empirical data, I'm sure, and the world's major religions would probably resist the notion, but I know that seagulls have emotions and a firm belief in an afterlife. Saw it myself. A sea gull somehow got itself entangled in some telephone wires across from an apartment I lived in and died trying to free itself. All through the struggle its companions had tried desparatly to disentangle it , then when the end came and the lifeless form hung from the wires an ever-growing number of them circled around above it day and night, all the time screeching long and loud, their pained cries tearing at one's heart. This went on for a couple of days, until at last I called the telephone company and they came and removed the dead bird, allowing its spirit to soar and bringing about a reflective quietude among its devoted brethren.
Okay, there you go. If believing makes it so there are definitely seagulls in heaven. So even up there you've got to be careful not to drop anything that's even close to being edible.
» left by Cliff Gallant from Portland, Maine (228 days 20 hours ago.)
Connor:
It's illegal to kill a seagull in this country as well, per my comment in the article about seagulls being protected by Federal law.
Thank you very much for your comment. It's a wonder, this putting your stuff out there for a worldwide audience without having to go through some cumbersome publishing process. Can you imagine anyone even conjecturing on such a thing just a few short years ago?
Do you write? Regards, Cliff Gallant Portland, Maine
( Portland is the largest city in the largely state of Maine, a predominately rural state that is as big as all of the other five New England states put together, but having the lowest population of any of the six states. We're the northernmost state on the eastern seaboard and are, in fact, the only US state to border only one other state. We're 110 miles north of Boston, Massachusetts, straight up the east coast. The birthplace of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the first non-British poet to be honored with a sculpted bust in the poet's corner of West Minster Abbey, and still the only American so honored. )
Seagulls are one of few animals that benefit from our pollution that I knew. I had no idea the birds had the kind of emotion, dare I say grief, described by Cliff Gallant. From now on I will never view them in them same way. Of course, if one tries to swoop down stealing a thick swordfish steak off our grill again in the harbor, I'll still curse it and hope that one, is not one of the seagulls that lives to be forty-nine.
They really do communicate. How else could so many show up so quickly when there is food around. They are like teenagers texting where the party is tonight.
Very nice article, Cliff. I almost feel guilty being irritated at them when they are swooping down for a snack near where I am sitting. Almost (smile).
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