Performing CPR... on a Seagull?!!

I have now lived here at the seaside in Kent for 40 years, give or take a month or two. I first came to Folkestone in 1986, primarily for work purposes and, I never really left even though I took early retirement from my salaried job in 2009.

But there's always been one set of residents in this town that I have never been able to get on with. Seagulls. Yes, you are correct in assuming that they are part and parcel of living on the coast and yes, they were here long before me or my cars were. I learnt pretty much early on in my adopted town that, you do not eat while out in the open, nor do you wash and wax your car while the shitehawks are gathered on nearby rooftops and are watching your every move and poised to attack.

Seagulls are vermin, the scavenging rats of the sky. They will swoop down without a moment's grace and pinch your sausage or chips from the very bag or newspaper that you are eating them from. They repaint your car, caravan or transit van a shade of mixed white and yellow, while squawking at their successful direct hits. The biggest religion down here is rushing outside with a bucket of foamy water and a sponge to quickly wash off their deposits before the rot sets in culminating in the need for a total car respray. Only for the buggers to perform their dirty trick again as soon as you go back indoors...!

So, please forgive me when I say that I find this following true story utterly disturbing. A week or so ago, as I write this, I read a report about when two Turkish football clubs - Mevlanakapi Guzelhisar and Istanbul Yurdum Spor - had been playing against each other for 22 minutes when 'disaster' occurred. Apparently, the Istanbul goalkeeper lofted the ball from a goal-kick and scored a direct hit on a seagull, which reportedly fell to the ground with a thud. The gull was apparently out cold. But stranger happenings were to follow, as the referee immediately stopped the game and then... the Istanbul captain proceeded to give the silenced squawker CPR on the pitch! Eventually 'revived', the Istanbul medical staff took the gull off to the side of the pitch and resumed recovery treatment on it! The world really has gone mad!

I know we are all God's creatures but seagulls, in my experience, abuse that fact big time. Although they are apparently a protected species, seagulls are also expendable. If we run down one in the street and then it is squashed by a pantechnicon coming the other way, or one flies directly at our windscreen and breaks its neck upon impact, we do not have to report these facts. But just you try shooting one with a catapult or an air rifle and see how much hot water you get into...

Trevor Mulligan

Note: No seagulls leading up to or during the writing of this post were intentionally harmed in any way by the writer.