Attack of the killer Gulls

This morning I had a story I wrote linked to from the main BBC Homepage - great if it wasn’t for the fact that the story is four years old. But it isn’t out of date, still relevant.

Sea Gulls and whether they should be culled is always relevant, especially if you live anywhere near the pests. But, normally when we do a Have Your Say kind of story we’ll get an average of about 10 comments a day for about three or four days. Easy to handle.

This morning a story written four years ago suddenly had over 100 comments on it - all of which need to be read, all of which I need to decide if it can be published or not.

So appologies if you followed the Sea Gulls: Your Views link from the BBC Homepage, posted a comment and haven’t had it published - I’m on my own and only have so much time.

Anyway - this reminded me of another article I wrote last year about an experience I had one lunch break trying to eat a sandwich in the park.

Attack of the killer Gull

Like many islanders I enjoy sitting in the park while I eat my lunch or in the summer by the beach, either way, eating outside is a good thing.

Whether squatting on the edge of a bench because it’s been raining or crashed out on a towel on the beach, a sandwich away from my desk, in the fresh air is a great way to spend my lunch break.

However it isn’t that easy. In fact what I mentioned above is the ideal I have in my head before actually setting off for my break.

I leave the office, book in hand, iPod playing in my ears and lunch in my bag ready for an hour of chilled out relaxation away from a computer.

It doesn’t happen. Yes I get away from a computer but it is about as far away from chilled out as you could possibly get.

Let me explain why with a little story.

Last week I decided, as the weather was clearing up, the sky was blue and there was no rain in sight that I would go and eat my lunch in Liberation Square.

I chose Liberation Square because people take their dogs into the various parks and Jardin de la Mer and I don’t like dogs.

Anyway, I got to the square, sat down on a bench, put my iPod away, got my book out and started reading.

Nice and peaceful so far. Apart from the cars, busses and a teenager on a bike with no seat there was hardly any noise. Not even a Sea Gull squawking away.

Then it all went horribly wrong.

I was hungry so took my sandwich out of my bag – a fairly normal, innocent thing to do and this went well, I didn’t drop it or anything. One gull lands next to me.

I can live with one gull so I open the foil keeping the sandwich fresh. Another two gulls fly in but I can cope with three Gulls so I take a bite.

That’s where things start to go seriously bad. By the time I’d swallowed the first bite of the sandwich I had about a million Gulls in front of me, two million behind, three on the bench next to me, ten million overhead and one I’ve called ‘I’M GOING TO DIE’ on a suicide mission sweeping down towards me.

So I did the only sensible thing and put the sandwich away, got up and walked to the other side of the square and sat down again.

This time I got two bites of the sandwich before ’I’M GOING TO DIE’ and his friends returned for another four sided attack.

To cut a long story short I ended up eating my sandwich at my desk in front of my computer where I’m safe from killer Gulls.

Don’t think I didn’t try to eat the sarnie on the way back to the office, I did but ‘I’M GOING TO DIE’ followed me. Every time I tried to take my lunch out of its foil he made scaringly close sweeping manoeuvres.

I love the beach, I love the park, I love eating my lunch outside but it just isn’t safe with all these flying beasts trying to attack me.

So for now I’ll stick to lunch at my desk and a book by the beach.

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