As a child, I loved seagulls. One year, for my birthday, my mom got us a beach front hotel for 2 weeks (it may also have been a trial separation from my dad, I don’t remember) It was amazing. My birthday is in the winter, so not only was it super cheap, but I got to see snow on the beach, and there was no one else, so the beach wasn’t crowded. I would feed the seagulls for hours.

One day, I decided to up the game. There was a little burger place that would give me free fries to feed the gulls, because they cooked them in batches, and ended up tossing a lot.

So, I get my 5 gallons of fries or so, and I go to our hotel room on the 4th floor, and stand on the balcony and feed the gulls.

Then the phone rings, and I go into the room to answer it, bringing with me the fries (cause I’m like 9 years old, and I don’t want the gulls to eat them all while I’m not there to watch). I answer the phone and then turn around to see that I have left the balcony doors open, and now there are approximately 100 billion seagulls swarming into the hotel room.

Slammed the phone down, and bolted for the balcony, forcing my way through a squawking, squalling, shrieking solid wall of gulls as they snapped at me, scratched at me with their claws (did you know they had claws? I didn’t!), and generally caused mayhem and havoc the likes of which no hotel room has seen since the era of big haired rock stars.

Luckily, fry bucket in hand, they mostly followed me out and ate the fries I flung off the balcony, most of which got eaten before ever touching the ground.

My mom came back to the room a few hours later to find me cleaning up gull shit off of basically ever surface, covered in scratches and bruises, bleeding on basically every exposed inch of my body.

As a child, I loved seagulls.

I still fucking do. They’re my spirit animal. I love gulls. I strive to be a gull. If I were a furry, I’d be a fucking gull furry (feathery? Are there bird furries?)