Sneaky Seagulls

I have decided I hate seagulls.

When we were at Hampton Beach, Lillian packed a zip-loc bag of Cheeze-its for us to snack on. Seagulls are sneaky, dirty birds, and the moment they realized we were eating something, they started to crowd around us. I would throw things at them, like small plastic shovels and small plastic people, but they kept coming back.

The boys, however, had moved on, and Lillian had needed to return to the cabin for a short errand. I found the bag of cheeze-its, and eventually placed it in Lillian's bag, hoping the stupid birds would lose interest. As time passed, the boys started playing further and further away from where we had set up. In fact, they were moving closer and closer to where other people - many of them childless - were quietly attempting to read their books despite being hit in the head with a small inflatable ball.

So, being a responsible parent, I walked in their direction, waving my arms and motioning for my children to return to our blanket and for goodness sakes, stop bothering every other person on the beach!

I was gone about thirty seconds. When I returned to the blanket, I noticed the seagulls had swarmed again, and one was walking away with the entire bag of cheeze-its in it's mouth.

This was not a small sandwich bag. It was a quart-size freezer bag.

If the gull had had toes, it would have been tip-toeing. I could tell it was moving slowly, whistling to it's birdy-self in it's birdy brain, hoping I wouldn't notice the fact that it had stolen our goodies.

The trouble was, of course, that it couldn't fly. The cheeze-its were too heavy. So I sent Nick after it. Nick ran, and the gulls scattered, and Lillian showed up just in time to see Nick hand me the zip-loc bag of crackers that nobody would eat.

As if this weren't enough, a few days later, on a different trip down, a seagull pooped on my head.

It is now an all out war.