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.
Excellent Mr Esq. A bit of Nordie persuasion is all it takes to create a post? Rest assured that Nordie persuasion will continue until you post more frequently.
I once saw a swan fighting a seagull. The swan grabbed the seagull’s wing in its beak and threw it at the canal bank. If seagulls are the ninjas of the bird world, then swans are the terminator robots.
Whereas flamingos are the grizzled, one-eyed mercenaries, and magpies are just run-of-the-mill murderers.
“Birdy panic” – I do believe the phrase well fits someone I know (sinister laugh…)
You thought, then, to offer logic by way of aid to your erstwhile comrade in arms, Sir Percival, and yet now you flee, unfollowing him when your Logic is challenged, eh?
Off with you then! Feed your birdies while Percy writes his Poesy. Sissies both! For even now I watch and laugh as you retreat, or, in the words of the “attackers” in Monty Python’s storied Quest, “Run Away…”
SUDDENLY there enters Sir Percival, White Knight vigorously waving his longsword: “O Assailant Most Foul indeed! First a bag over thy head for Disguise and now you have usurped mine goodly URL and called us Sissies!? Have at it then!”
(Clash, clank, whomp, whoosh as the swordplay continues toward steep precipice and fade…)
DISCLAIMER, Foul Assailant: Please excuse if I am incorrect and you are not in fact the eighth person who was following Sir Percy’s blog and has now fled to safety. As a Foul Assailant I am much given to making brash and colourful statements; occasionally I misstate matters of fact.
LOL!!!!! I love it!!!! Whenever I go to Stephen’s Green during lunch and actually have some food left I make it my mission to feed the smallest and saddest looking bird on the lake but yeah, those stupid seagulls ALWAYS get in the way and then I get frustrated and then I look like crazy person….good times!