Nov 14 2007
Feeding the Gulls
Yesterday, I happily fed the gulls.
I mentioned in a previous post that the bird life has been decimated by this spill; I don’t care what numbers are being officially reported; the marina seems barren and deserted since the spill. Usually, I am awakened in the morning by the calls of the gulls, and I haven’t heard them since the morning after the spill. It’s wrenching each and every morning.
Mostly, gulls are the bane of liveaboard existence. I cannot tell you how many people I’ve educated at top volume, not to feed the gulls right next to my boat. Because we’re right next to the seawall, people will walk out there, and they think that feeding the birds is fun and cute. They have never been the recipient of the take-off poop that happens when they get done feeding and move on to other things. I am here to tell you, I have spent more mornings than I care to number, hosing and scrubbing seagull poop off the lovely sides and top of our home.
Just one slip down and over, Beverly, another liveaboard, also pretty much despises the gulls. She’s responsible for keeping all the docks in the marina clean, and does twice-weekly powerwashings. Needless to say, the gulls are responsible for most of the messes she cleans up. Not only the poop, but they have this habit of picking the mussels off the undersides of the docks (not a bad thing), flying up 10 or 15 feet, and then dropping them onto the docks to split them open. Once opened, the gulls, messy eaters at best, leave bits of gluey, drying mussel all over the scene of the crime. Even a powerwasher has trouble contending with sun dried mussel.
So yesterday, I was down in the galley doing general cleanup and maintenance. In order to minimize the amount of sheer solid waste, all vegetable matter goes into a blender container and gets liquefied. Earlier in the year, I would pour it off the transom, and the little silver fish (which I am now told may well be herring) would swarm up for their feeding. Since the fish have grown up and moved on, I just dump it down the drain.
Suddenly, there was a delightful cacophony of gull. Jason and I both dashed up onto deck to see what was up, where we found between 15 and 20 birds, floating right behind our boat, calling to each other to announce food. Beverly was outside too, and it took us all a few minutes to figure out that the gulls were eating the floating compost. They’ve never done that before, not in the entire time we’ve lived here.
And ya know what? We were, the three of us, absolutely delighted. There they were, a group of live, non-oiled birds with appetites. We stood there and watched them eat, and then mosey on about their business.
Joni Mitchell was right. Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone? Here, gulls. Have something to eat. And stay out of the oil, please.
I really need to keep better track of my friends! I knew you were planning to live on a boat, but didn’t realize you were already there yet. Sorry to hear about the oil spill. Yuck. I hope it gets cleaned up well and soon, but the problem is of course that it’s icky stuff that’s hard to clean up.