Stop Feeding the Seagulls!

by Donna Poole

It was a chilly fall day at Lake Huron, rainy too. It wasn’t an ideal day to eat lunch on a balcony, but that’s what we were doing.

I hate wasting a second of watching the water when we’re on vacation. I mean, you can be warm and dry when you aren’t on a holiday, right? I coaxed a reluctant John into eating on the balcony with me.

We were enjoying baked pasta with amazing meatballs and a side of garlic bread. The seagulls on the sand three floors below us began congregating.

“They’re staring at us,” John said. “I think they’re used to people tossing food to them.”

“If they want this food, I’m pretty sure they’re Italian seagulls.” I laughed.

The helpful gulls had no intention of letting too almost elderly people eat more pasta than was good for them.

“Let’s help them,” the seagull leader called.

With answering squawks, screeches, and shrieks his tribe obeyed. They rose as one from the sand and circled our balcony. A few of the braver ones dive-bombed us, desperate for some good Italian food.

We retreated inside.

“Rats,” I complained to John. “I wish I’d gotten a photo. I’ll try to get one when we eat breakfast outside tomorrow.”

“We’re eating breakfast outside tomorrow?”

“Sure! Maybe it will be warmer. Maybe it will quit raining.”

It wasn’t and it didn’t. But we took our breakfast outside. There were as many gulls as the day before, but they showed no interest in our bread spread with peanut butter, not even when I held it over the side of the balcony.

“Told you they were Italian,” I said to John.”

I’ve been thinking about those gulls. I watched a video of aggressive gulls chasing a terrified child down a beach trying to get her chicken nugget. Poor kid. I didn’t blame her for being afraid. I’d been scared of them too when they’d dive-bombed us. I hadn’t feared their claws or talons, but I was seriously afraid they might poop on my food!

 Seagulls aren’t naturally aggressive. People make them that way by feeding them. I read an article titled, “For the Love of God, stop Feeding the Seagulls and Here’s Why”. The article basically said don’t feed them for two reasons:

1. It’s bad for them; they wait for easy handouts of unhealthy food and no longer work to get fish and insects that are good for them.
2. It’s bad for us. When we feed seagulls, they can become overly aggressive. Think Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, “The Birds.”

My dad enjoyed feeding birds. When my siblings and I were young he took us to Stewart Park in Ithaca, New York, where we fed ducks and swans. When Dad grew old and lived alone after Mom died, he fed crows.

We discovered his crow-feeding hobby by accident when we drove from Michigan to New York State to visit Dad. There, in his immaculate, weed-free yard, we saw a heap of spaghetti noodles. I looked twice to be sure that’s what it was.

I asked Dad if some garbage had spilled and told him we’d clean it up for him.

Dad chuckled. “That’s still there? They must not have been too hungry yesterday.”

My Italian dad ate pasta fazool and spaghetti quite often and shared the cooked, plain pasta with the crows.

He explained. “I go outside and call, ‘crows, crows,’ and they come. Then I toss the spaghetti up in the air. They dive for it and get some of it before it hits the ground!”

You can bet a buck or a billion of them Dad wouldn’t have been doing that if Mom had still been alive. Again, think Hitchcock and “The Birds”.

Seagulls and crows might look graceful flying in the distance, but I don’t want them dive-bombing me, screaming their raucous cries in my ear, or pooping in my hair.

Those birds remind me of worry. That’s what worry does—spoils a good Italian lunch eaten on a balcony with a beautiful view we can enjoy only for a limited time. Worry distracts us from fully experiencing a quiet walk on the beach.

And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a murder of crows following me down a meandering backroad and cawing for my next plate of pasta.

The solution is simple; for the love of peace stop feeding the birds. An old saying: “You can’t stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”

So, what do you say we stop feeding worry. Let’s not give it even one more crumb of garlic bread. When worry starts its raucous cries overhead we can nudge that crow or seagull over God’s way. We can do it something like this: “God, this (insert worry) is troubling me. I don’t want to feed it by brooding about it. I know You’re a good God and good and what You do, so I’m leaving this with You. Show me what, if anything, You want me to do.”

Then watch the crows and seagulls fly away. They’ll go where someone else will feed them. Oh, they’ll be back, and we’ll have to nudge them God’s way again, but for now, bye bye, birdie, bye bye.