Today I saw a dude trying to feed some ducks. Trying, because seagulls are like ninjas. There were two ducks sitting right in the middle of the canal, no other birds in sight, and the instant the first bit of bread hit the water it was grabbed by a seagull who’d swooped in out of nowhere. I reckon ducks are used to this, because they didn’t put up much of a fight, and within minutes they’d been shunted over to the banks. At first, to his credit, Dude tried to manoeuvre a few scraps through the storm, but eventually he gave up in favour of tricking the gulls into some slick-ass aeronautics. I’m pretty sure they were doing barrel-rolls at one point.
What was interesting was how the system evolved. Dumping bread in the water is well and fine for your laid-back duck-type scenario, but it’s way less than efficient when what you’re feeding is essentially a scale model of a Mongolian horde. As time went on the gulls formed into a basic rubgy line-out configuration while Dude fired the bread directly at them in mid-air. I don’t know if you know how ludicrous it looks when twenty-odd birds are doing a kind of asynchronous low-gravity pogo-hop off the surface of a canal, but I’ll clue you in: pretty damn ludicrous.
There was one sorry bastard in the middle of all this, jumping at all the wrong times and giving off an adorable impression of birdy panic. As I stood up to leave, he finally pulled together enough sense to huff his way out of the crowd, and our hero tossed a scrap his way. And then, with the most beautiful comic timing I’ve ever seen in the animal kingdom… a duck got it.
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