Gull Down!

Remember the Hitchcock movie, The Birds, when those winged creatures swooped down on the people? In our case, it was the gulls, who swooped down on all of us while we were at the beach. One moment my granddaughter happily took a snack out of the food bags, when a gull swooped down and took a chip out of her mouth and another one bit her finger while making off with the red licorice from her other hand. A few seconds later, another granddaughter opened the bag of chips and left it open, when a flock of gulls descended and all hell broke loose.

 

I managed to lose it, yelling something about morons who open and leave food exposed in a not so grandmotherly way. All the while a ton of seagulls were swooping down on us. One of the adults swung a long handled shovel in the air to get the gulls off of the little kids, when contact was made. A thump sounded, and a gull went down with a broken wing. There was nothing but silence; the silence was deafening. This was amazing because there were four adults, a baby being fed a bottle, seven kids between the ages of 1-year- old to 12-years- old, who started screaming and yelling. One son moved incredibly fast with his wife and six kids across the hot sand, the rest of us got up in one fluid movement, grabbed our beach gear, and scurried on back to our beach rental.

 

I felt sorry for the kid who got bit, the other grandchildren who were traumatized, and for the person who had such great aim. But mostly, I was sorry for the wounded gull.

 

I’m happy to say – no one got arrested, we were more cautious with our snacks and I got this incredible story to blog about – gull down.