Picture the scene, the whole of the UK is experiencing a heatwave, and we are not prepared for it, especially here in Scotland. Unlike other countries who experience warm summers, we don’t get the gradual warm up and decrease in temperatures in spring and autumn to adapt, we go from winter to summer and then back to what feels like winter again. I’m not even sure that we truly experience spring and autumn anymore. Anyway, we went from hovering around 12*c/53.6*f to 27*c/80.6*f overnight, and enjoyed these delightfully hot days for over a week. This in itself is a complete rarity, but to have these kind of temperatures coincide with the first stage of lockdown being eased was an absolute miracle! After months of complete face to face isolation, we could now meet up with another household outdoors. Now, the area in which I live comes into play for the rest of this story. I am within a few minutes walking distance of both a beautiful park, and a tidal river. The hot weather combined with the slight ease of lockdown meat there were far more people enjoying the park with their friends than there had been in the weeks prior, and this then lead to an increase of people walking along the river to get too and from the park. As anyone who lives near the coast will tell you, there are always an abundance of seagulls. So on this one particular late afternoon, I decided to walk to the supermarket that is roughly a mile away, to get one of those fold up camping chairs, so I could go to the park to read or crochet, and be able to sit on a proper seat. Whilst there are plenty of benches there, you could guarantee they’d all be taken, now that you could start to socialize again. Anyway, the incident happened whilst I was walking home with said fold up chair. I was casually walking alongside the sea wall, when a gentleman went around me on his bike. There was nothing unusual about that, a lot of people cycle along there, but what happened next could only be classed as comedy gold. The tide was out, meaning that the edges of the riverbed were exposed, on which the seagulls were hanging about on. Walking along at a leisurely pace, I noticed this. The guy on his bike however, was too focused on his cycling and listening to music. So, one of the seagulls hatched a dastardly plan to scare the guy. The seagull took off from the riverbed, and swooped straight up and landed on the wall, right beside the guy on his bike, terrifying the shit out of him!! In the most dramatic comedic fashion, the guy slammed on his brakes, and went sideways. It happened almost in slow motion, you could just see the bike jolt to the right, taking him with it!! How I never burst out laughing, I’ll never know!! Thankfully the guy wasn’t injured, other than his pride being a little bruised and dented.
That night, whilst talking to my local friend on the phone, I told her the story of the evil seagull, and she absolutely howled with laughter. I’ll be honest, she was squawking so much, I half expected her to lay an egg at one point. She asked if he’d fallen over the side and gone over the wall, and when I said that no, the shitehawk was on that side, so he fell into the middle of the path, she said it would have been even more funny had he fallen over the wall. The very next afternoon I got a message from her, and she told me about how she’d gone on a walk to the river on her lunch break at work, and sat enjoying the peacefulness, when a seagull, which I’m convinced is the same evil one from the previous day, swooped down and stole her banana out of her hand, slicing open her finger at the same time!! I could have understood it if it was a Gregg’s sausage roll or steak bake or even chips, but since when to seagulls attack you for FRUIT?!?! The result of that conversation was that she said she now understood why I called them shitehawks (because they’re evil), and that from that very moment in time, she would no longer be calling them beach chickens.
And that my friends, is the tale of the evil shitehawks, and how not even your fruit is sacred. If you have it, they will attack you for it. Below is a picture of the seagull standing proud, watching the bike guy that had just fallen off his bike get back on it and cycle off into the distance!!
The Broken Butterfly 