Seagulls are the Rodney Dangerfield of the bird world: they get no respect.
If you see a cardinal or blue jay, your soul is nurtured. Well, mine is. But to people around the world, a seagull is not a beautiful sight to behold. A seagull is a brazen maniac that violates human ground space by dive-bombing and looting snacks in between squawking and defecating.
A seagull is basically Amber Heard in a hang glider.
My wife and I were once strolling through Venice and holding hands at sunset — this was long before the mortgage and kids — when a hot liquid blasted my right temple. Ahh! I instinctively reached for my face. Upon glancing at the mysterious substance on my fingers, which was gloopy and flaxen, I declared: “Someone threw hot mustard on me!”
My wife sighed, retrieved a Kleenex from her purse and gave up.
On a second-floor ledge, the seagulls were in twitchy formation, as if waiting for the doors to open on Black Friday. That wasn’t mustard dripping down my cheek. That was seagull excrement and there were more sorties in the offing if we didn’t hightail it to Saint Mark’s Basilica.
I share this anecdote — one day I will tell you about the time a camel with a personality disorder chased me in Jaipur — because the seagull is now wreaking so much havoc in that Italian city, hotels this month are arming guests with water pistols to engage in human-to-avian tourist combat.
With the possible exception of cormorants, which New Scientist once characterized as “fish thieves” and “riverbank wreckers,” no bird faces a bigger PR crisis than the seagull. Greedy, monosyllabic, marine assassins with an insatiable appetite and no conscience — that’s how seagulls were portrayed in “Finding Nemo,” which was a movies for children.
And now seagull slander has gone intergalactic.
Do you ever read a headline and think: I’m sorry, what?
That’s what I thought on Friday after reading this story in the UK’s Mirror: “Seagulls Could Be Alien Spies Sent To Watch Us, UFO Expert Claims.”
The expert is identified as Nick Pope, who “worked as a government advisor on alien issues.” As Pope explained: “If aliens want to hack into and control a living organism, or construct a drone that’s a perfect mimic, it would be best to choose something ordinary and ubiquitous, like a seagull … Something you wouldn’t normally pay much attention to, perhaps.
“But all the time, it would be spying on us, recording everything, and sending information about us back to the alien home world.”
I’m not saying this fellow needs a drug test. But why would aliens entrust sensitive intel gathering to Laridae seabirds that lose their minds in the presence of french fries? That alone is a security risk. Have you ever watched a seagull hop around a picnic area scavenging for scraps? There is nothing about that bobbing head and blank stare that hints at espionage.
If we are going to flutter into Crazy Town and start smearing animals that could be extraterrestrial secret agents, surely there are better candidates.
Mr. Pope, I encourage you to do some due diligence on cats. Unlike seagulls, these fluffballs are inside our homes. They nap for 15 hours a day, which is the universal relay time needed to upload neural data and reconnaissance.
Felines hold humans in contemplation. Oh, they will purr and begrudgingly allow lap petting. They will arch their spines as you scratch the scruff of their necks after prying open a can of Fancy Feast. But later, as you watch TV, suddenly kitty is sizing you up with cold-blooded disdain as it licks its paws.
As someone who adores birds and has an open mind about UFOs, I am finding this Nick Pope getting on my nerves because he has just discredited both.
After decades, UFOs have finally taken off from the nutjob fringe and now hover in the mainstream. Governments around the world — especially the United States — seem more open to the possibility the truth is out there. In the last few years, I have read declassified reports about navy pilot sightings or unexplained aerial phenomenon that were once verboten. If there is life elsewhere in the universe — and that life sees Earth as Disney World — this is the most monumental news in the history of this planet.
It takes everything we think we know and turns it upside down.
And then a UFO “expert” claims seagulls are alien spies and ruins everything.
Now, if Mr. Pope claimed the ’80s new wave band A Flock of Seagulls were cosmic emissaries, I might listen, especially while recalling certain lyrics: “A beam of light comes shining down on you / Shining down on you / The cloud is moving nearer still / Aurora borealis comes in view.”
That’s the Travis Walton story right there.
The song “I Ran” seems possibly alien. An actual seagull does not.
More insights from Mr. Pope: “Any civilization capable of getting here from other star systems undoubtedly has technology that would seem like magic to us, and one possibility is that they might be able to implant a living creature with tiny cameras and recording devices, and then control his thoughts to position it anywhere of interest.”
Well, if that’s true, seagulls should be swooping around nuclear power plants and government buildings. Instead, seagulls are skipping school, bumming cigarettes and begging for Pringles down by the marina.
UFOs are finally a subject worthy of serious inquiry.
Seagulls get enough grief as it is.
Putting them together is a disservice to both.
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