Hyenas With Wings - 195
Hal Waste His Wages!
June 20, 2006

I’ve been known to pick my share of fights with this column. I’m not afraid to go after the homeless a week before Christmas, or even take a swipe at moms and their strollers. But here’s a fight I neither started nor saw coming, but I must warn my fellow man to watch the skies. For joining the homeless and mothers in my paranoid axis of evil is a new and more frightening member, one who may strike from above without warning or remorse and slip off beyond the horizon before you even know what hit you.

The sea gull, or Larus argentatus (Latin for “Neptune’s minion”) is one of the greatest threats to society as we know it. These winged jackals were first vilified in the 1963 classic The Birds, and I’m telling you now Alfred Hitchcock was not a paranoid quack, but rather a vigilant visionary—as he knew then what I know now.

Truth be told, I actually love birds. I’ve enjoyed casual bird-watching since taking Ornithology in college to burn off a lab science requirement. I have an envious appreciation for the fly-about lifestyle of our winged friends—at least most of them. But in the wake of a recent incident I’m faced with a crisis of conscience that has rocked me to the core.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006—a day that will live in infamy. My parents had the week off and I opted to travel home to Central New York for a nice visit. We had spent much of the morning hiking around Beaver Lake Nature Center (8477 East Mud Lake Road, Baldwinsville, NY) appreciating the existential balance of man and his environment. After exploring the local flora and fauna, we decided to head up to Rudy’s Lakeside (78 County Rt. 89, Oswego NY) on the shores of Lake Ontario for a couple of their signature “Texas Hots” (where else would you go for something called a “Texas Hot” but Central New York, of course. For the record, “Texas Hots” are similar to “Michigans,” which are obviously found in Northern New York—duh…).

Rudy’s is an institution in Oswego. Think Biggie’s Clam Bar (318 Madison St., Hoboken) on the shore of a Great Lake. And anyone who’s been to Rudy’s knows the gulls can be a little aggressive. Ubiquitous signs implore customers not to feed the gulls, as they tend to get more and more brazen as the years go by. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t been there in a few years.

As I walked out of the lakeside restaurant with a tray full of food, no more than 3 seconds later this sea gull, this scavenger turned raptor swept in directly over my left shoulder screeching like a Stuka dive bomber, then flew off with its score like a dingo eating a baby. Thankfully, I was able to maintain my composure enough to hold the remaining food items, as apparently sea gulls only like the Texas Hots without mustard.

I calmly walked back into Rudy’s where the lovely waitress was kind enough to replace the filched frank. She even accepted the blame, stating it was her fault for not covering the tray. But we all knew who the real culprit was, and he was outside crowing like the cock of the rock.

The rest of the meal was spent cowering under a tin-roofed seating area. You could hear the gulls pounding on the roof like some sort of Velociraptor out of Jurassic Park. But rather than sniveling like Jeff Goldblum, my reaction was more like Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes On A Plane—I was sick and tired of these ^*+#@$*(%!^& sea gulls!!! I felt like grabbing a few packs of Alka Seltzer and gettin’ all Anti-Audubon on their @$$.

After returning home, I calmed down and considered dismissing it as an isolated incident, but it turns out on that same day just a Great Lake away, birds were involved in an assault on civilian targets.

According to the Sandusky Register, visitors at a Put-In-Bay, Ohio park on the shores of Lake Erie were also attacked by an aggressive bird. This led me to wonder, were these coordinated attacks? Is there some sort of network, a Gull-Qaeda of sorts, which purposely and audaciously launched an assault on U.S. shores?

Just as Americans are looking to their northern border with apprehension, fellow citizens on the frontline are already reeling from an unspeakable campaign of terror. How do we respond? Do we soldier on with our daily lives or do we cower in fear of these treacherous beasts, these cawing hyenas of the skies?

One foreseeable solution is an end to all migration. How are we supposed to secure our borders when these creatures fly back and forth unchecked and undocumented. I propose a net be erected along our entire nation reaching from the earth to the heavens. I mean, if bird flu wasn’t enough to get us working on this, I think now the mission is clear.

But at the same time, it’s important for us not to profile. Not all birds are out to get us, in fact, it may not even be all sea gulls. I would, however, keep an eye on the pigeons. I’ve never trusted pigeons, and as they tend to associate with the gulls I wonder if they're nothing but an avian sleeper cell. They’ve infiltrated our society and they’re watching our every move. I say we hit ‘em where it hurts—no more bread crumbs people. For if we simply roll over and give these creatures what they want, the seagulls have already won.

It turns out you were right all along Tippi, wherever you are…

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