Lots of seagulls in Torquay. The local division two football team, Torquay United are known as "The Gulls". They are also known by one or two other names which I can't mention here due to the fact that they had a good start to the season but have lost the knack of winning over the last few weeks. But I am not here to talk about football but seagulls. Is you don't live in a seaside town you probably think gulls are magnificent birds. I mean, look at the picture.
If you do live in a seaside town or one that has open cast rubbish tips then you know that gulls are loud, aggressive birds that start screaming an hour before the sun comes up and rip in to plastic rubbish bags in the hope of finding food and are litter louts of the first order. Down here there are notices asking people not to feed the gulls but they get so much food they are able to breed twice a year. We are over run with gulls. Last time I hit a gull it flew into the nearside front windscreen and splattered. The only person on the bus was a sweet little old lady and being new to the bay I was very surprised when she said,"Oh good, an other of the buggers dead." That was 8 years ago and I can now understand why people don't like them, but I do. I mean, look at the picture.
Still, since early Sunday morning we have one less in the Bay. Wasn't my fault, he/she just walked out in front of the bus. I swerved madly hitting two cyclists, three parked cars before ending up in someone's front garden. O.K. O.K. I didn't. Never swerve to avoid seagulls or you could hit two cyclist, three parked cars and four partridges in a pear tree in someone's front garden.
I wasn't even sure I had hit the poor little thing until a couple of hours later when I came back from Brixham. But there it was, lying in the road, dead.
Sorry seagull.
5 comments:
Good job done there Dave, only another three hundered million to go but i'm sure over time............
I once had a (to begin with, smallish) cat who in the course of his natural growth, was gradually building up the helpless prey stakes - the birds he so elegantly ripped the heads off got slightly bigger every time...I suppose it was inevitable really - the day we came back and found total carnage in the backyard - now not-so-smallish cat is looking somewhat dusty, battered and shellshocked, but the seagull is festooned in pieces around the garden - place stunk like a charnel house (god knows what crap they eat?) - cat grew enormous, (mostly muscle/sinew), survived everything nature threw at him, (including cancer), and eventually died of old age at twenty - but as far as I know, from the day of the seagull, he never chased or killed another bird - whatever happened seemed to have cured the bloodlust!
I've come close to hitting birds a few times while riding a motorbike on the way to work.
We have a bird here called a rainbow lorikeet. I've seen them hit parked cars, the shed, even a palm tree.
Luckily I don't ride much now because it's only a matter of time before I arrive home covered in bright red, blue and green feathers and lorikeet blood.
We have the same problems up here in Aberdeen. Tenement flat roofs make wonderful cliff top like breeding colonies it would appear.
What we need is a couple of breeding pairs of golden eagles.
I must admit to muttering at people who feed gulls and pigeons. They are just daft. At least gull are pretty, the pigeons here are sooo manky. Apparently, there's some geezer wandering around with an air rifle doing harm to swans and other wildfowl. Why couldn't he be more productive? Rid us of the bloody pigeons.
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