Friday, January 23, 2009

When Gulls Attack

Heermann's gull attacked Kansas couple eating ice cream at Laguna Beach

Some of my fondest memories were made, and continue to be so, in and around Laguna Beach and Dana Point Harbor while fishing with my son. The Son is an avid fisherman. I'm not, so I just kinda tag along while he does most of the actual fishing. I catch a few fish, but it's mostly about the two of us just hanging out enjoying our time together.

When the fish aren't biting, we can be seen throwing a few rocks at the flying wharf rats.
Yes. That's right.
"Endangered" (bullshit!) species be damned, rats are rats,wings or not.

And these Heerman's Gulls, of which the link speaks, really are the worst of what truly is a badly behaving species of bird to begin with.

Here is how it starts:
You are minding your own business, peacefully communing with the great outdoors, enjoying a few laughs.

The gulls notice just what a swell time you are having, and send in The Recon Gulls.

These Recon Gulls aren't stupid, and are specially trained to zero in and identify certain items of interest: bait bag of anchovies, bucket of previously caught fish, your sack lunch...

Soon, the Recon Gulls leave and within a few minutes, every damn Gull on the west coast is up deep inside your stuff. And they know where they're going (because the Recon Gulls already told them,remember?)

They will swoop in and rip your bait sardine out of your hands while you try to bait a hook. They will attempt to take the whole bait bag out of your hands. They will steal the fish from your bucket. They will knock over your beer.

And if you resist their thuggery, they will shit on you.

I can't understand why the hell any of these birds need legal protection when they seem to do just fine while they gang together and harass us poor human folk.
We need to fight The Gulls. But it's not easy. They got The Cops,The Audubon Society, and Fishing Wardens on their side.
You gotta be stealthy, is what I'm saying.
But be warned: just swinging a stick isn't good enough. Launching an assault pisses them off further, unless you actually do hit one of them. This is important to remember.
If you can't land a strike, they won't fear you.

Kudos to Mr. Djuric for helping us take some of them out.
Unfortunatly for him, being from Kansas, he didn't know you weren't supposed to be seen doing it.

10 comments:

Brian said...

How do the relevant local statutes treat pellet guns?

Those were great for taking out the pigeons nesting (shitting, etc) on my balcony in Tucson...

Gino said...

after getting busted for harming the gulls, you would also get busted for illegal use of a firearm. CA isnt keen on any kind of gun.

Mr. D said...

One word. Semtex.

Anonymous said...

Dude.

'Bird that smart, would clearly learn to back the hell off if all people threw rocks at them. Solving all the problems.

Pity the pelicans can't throw rocks.

I think I would take staff lessons (you still can through the SCA and I think some martial arts ;) ) and get all Little John on their asses, if I had to be in their presence often. They'd learn to avoid crazy ladies with walking sticks, anyhow.

DO I generally believe in the preservation of animals? yes. Do I think these brainy kind need brainless protections? no.

Anonymous said...

PS undoubtably they are "endangered" because like so many other things the subspecies is in fact a small population within the larger apparent population. (This is a pisser for people who hunt geese, I gather ... which mostly look very much the same but for some you can get arrested.)

Gino said...

mark: what, get them to eat it?

kr: just a few minutes of observation will show just how diverse the gull population around here.
i know the heerman's well enough. but there must be 5 other subspecies floating around. and they all suck.

tully said...

I suppose you're suspecting them of a coop d'etat...

Anonymous said...

;)

I had to laugh at that "unusually aggressive" descriptor from the bird-folks ... an "unusually aggressive" gull sounds horrific indeed ... and if that's what the bird-lovers said about it, well ... (!)

Jade said...

This reminds me of our honeymoon, we went to Disneyland and took a day trip to San Diego for Sea World. Our bus driver warned us to watch for gulls. We laughed.
We went to a rotisserie chicken place for lunch, got our food, sat down and started eating... a gull stood and stared at us (a hard, evil stare) and we hunched over our food prison-style to eat. A tourist walked out of the restaurant with her chicken sitting on her tray in front of her, she turned her head and a gull swooped down and seized her chicken.

The people in the restaurant laughed, but were kind enough to replace her lunch.

She ate inside.

Gino said...

see?
evil, i tell ya.