seagulls

Evil Seagull Lady

/ Diane Henders / 25 Comments

The other day I was down at the ocean (and I’m still thrilled that I can get there in fifteen minutes).  This is my favourite time of year to go to the beach – the days are crisp and the tourists are gone, so it’s only me and the waves and the seagulls.

And the Seagull Lady.

An elderly woman drove up and parked as I was walking down to the water’s edge, but I didn’t pay much attention – I was focused on getting to my favourite sandbar while the sun was turning the waves blue and silver.  I made a beeline for my special spot and stood there smiling, tuning out everything but the gentle hush of the waves and the cries of the seagulls.

Except… there seemed to be more seagull cries than usual.  And they weren’t the normal squawks that seagulls emit while they’re casually flying overhead deciding whether to shit on you.  These were more urgent squeals that were easy to translate:  “Feed me!  Feed me!  Feed me!”

I glanced over to see the Seagull Lady seated on a big driftwood log holding a bread bag and surrounded by gulls.  She tossed handful after handful of bread to the greedy crew, who gobbled it up and screamed for more.

I had several thoughts in quick succession:

  1. “Aw, that nice little old lady must love gulls.  That would make a great photo, with her sitting on that big log backlit by the sun and surrounded by birds.”
  2. “Jeez, I’m glad that’s not my house right next to the parking lot.  Now I know why there are always dozens of squawking gulls and a river of birdshit on their roof.  I bet the homeowners would love to smack that nice little old lady.”
  3. “I wonder if that nice little old lady knows that bread is unhealthy for gulls and she’s not really doing them any favours?”

That’s when my brain took a hard left (as it frequently does) and kickstarted my urge to create stories of mayhem and betrayal.

My next thought was this:

“What if that little old lady actually hates gulls?  What if she’s purposely feeding them bread in the full knowledge that it will make them malnourished and less able to fend for themselves?  OMG, what if that little old lady is actually a twisted psychopath who intentionally inflicts suffering on all living things?  That would make an awesome storyline!”

…And that’s what it’s like to live inside my head.

So the next time you see a woman at the beach gazing across the waves and smiling, don’t assume she’s all zen-and-happy-meditation.  She might be devising evil plots…

*

P.S. I’m travelling, so I’ll catch up with comments later in the day.  “Talk” to you then!  🙂

Book 14 update:  I hit the 50% mark this week, hooray!  This is where the plot gets complicated…

Seagulls And Other S-Words

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

Alert the medical community:  Stress suppresses the juvenile-humour centres of the brain!

The proof:  Last week I completely missed the opportunity to make a dirty joke about herring spawning.  Millions of fish were coming their little brains out, and all I did was remark on the pretty jade-green water caused by all that fish-spunk.

Good Lord.  After 50-odd (okay, extremely odd) years of childishness, I’d hate to grow up at this late date.  But now that I’ve realized I’m on the slippery slope toward maturity, at least I can step off and reconnect with my inner adolescent.

So… speaking of sea-sex:  I have suspicions about those frisky seals.  All that frolicking and barking seems a lot like the human equivalent of “Here, hold my beer and watch this!”  They’re definitely angling to impress the chicks.

The sea lions, on the other hand, are only thinking about stuffing themselves.  Sex, schmex.  Mating season isn’t until June or July for them, so this is all about the foodfest.  On calm mornings the ocean is crowded with clusters of twenty or thirty sea lions bobbing along, bulging bellies to the sky and languid flippers in the air.

Which leads me to my next suspicion…

Actually, never mind that.  It’s not a suspicion; it’s a certainty:  Those sea lions aren’t just pigging out.  After they’d been around for a few days, the water wasn’t jade-green anymore.  It was brownish.  And, um… pungent-ish.

With the sea lions polluting the water and the herring roe decomposing in malodorous drifts along the shore, I rerouted my daily walk a little farther inland and enjoyed the ocean view with the windows closed.  The route revision wasn’t much of a hardship, though, since I’d already altered my walking habits due to the millions of seagulls.  The beaches were white with them as far as the eye could see:

No, that’s not snow on the beach; it’s wall-to-wall gulls

It wasn’t so bad when they were on the ground, but if something startled them (say, some foolish human walking along the beach) they’d rise in a solid wall and shit-strafe the beach.

It’s like something out of Alfred Hitchcock.

According to folklore, it’s good luck if a bird scores a bullseye on you; but it’s unclear whether it’s good luck for the shittee or the shitter.  I’m inclined to think it’s the latter.  Especially if the shitter is a seagull.  All I’m gonna say is:  Seagulls are sick, sick birds.

Apparently eagles don’t like seagulls any better than I do.  It’s easy to tell when an eagle shows up:  The shit-hawks take flight en masse.

I’m pretty sure the eagles are just messing with the gulls – they’ll swoop in and land on the freshly vacated beach, and then just sit there.  They’re not hunting or fishing; they’re just hanging around like schoolyard bullies hogging the playground while the seagulls circle anxiously overhead. (No word on whether the eagles get shit-strafed, but they’re probably too cool to admit it if they do.)

So this weeks’s S-words are stress, spawn, shit-hawks, spunk, suspicions, slippery slopes, sexy seals, sleepy sea lions, sea-sex, sick seagulls, and shit-strafing.  And of course, a healthy dose of silliness.

‘Maturity’ just doesn’t suit the subject.

See…?