Seagulls of St Andrews

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I've run out of things to say about St Andrews already; all has been said before, no more events can possibly shock us (least of all after this week!). I know what you're thinking.

But hear me out nonetheless. Have you given the fauna of St Andrews any thought lately? If we think of the mysterious disappearance of the town bunnies (very ominous occurrence, which we shall not explore in depth to avoid offending the sensitivity of my animal-loving friends), the sea lions with the mold on their backs (courtesy of the St Andrews aquarium), the spiders residing in my house (good lord those beasts are big), and the cult for Hamish-MacHamish (the cat we love taking paparazzi pictures of), we begin to realise that the animals of St Andrews play a bigger part in our daily lives than we might be aware of.

And so it goes for the seagulls. Have you looked at the size of those birds? I mean, seriously looked at them? Those birds could kill a child, I mean it. They are half the size of my legs, and although that might not be saying much in the grand scheme of things (by which I mean the presence of certain long-legged Swede in my life) I am a pretty impressionable person. No bird should be able to look up at me from the point of view of a toddler.

In Italy, we are cautious about leaving trash bags on the streets because of rats and raccoons, and hedgehogs and boars if you're in the countryside. In Mexico, we are aware of the hungry rummaging of stray dogs and cats. But with some minimal awareness of the problem and some manual skills, the humans usually beat wildlife in this game. Nothing stops the seagulls here. I've seen them lift the lids of the trash containers in DRA. I can barely lift those things with the strenght of both my arms and a friend behind me, pushing me from below, propelling me while a third person throws the bin bag into the container. If the lid shuts on your finger, it's certain amputation. And yet, those seagulls can not only access the depths of Fife Council's bunker-style trash collectors, they will get everything out of the trash bags. Get in, get it all, leave no survivors. I bet that's what they're thinking on trash collection days.

If you don't believe how fierce these feathery psychos are, let me tell you what I saw a few days ago. I was sitting on the benches by Martyr's Monument. Two people sat down on the bench beside me with some wraps from Butler's, still steaming, the luscious odour of the meat and bread and exotic veggies permeating the air around us. They had barely looked at their delicious snack when, suddenly, a flock of seagulls just came and snatched the wraps out of both of their hands. That's TWO pairs of hands I'm talking of here. They were merciless. They even ate the wrapping. I swiftly made my way towards The Scores, clutching any part of me that had touched food in the course of that day, and seriously looking frantically to all sides to see which escape route was the quickest, and least deadly, should the birds come after me too.

I know people who have been attacked by the seagulls, people who have been shat on by them (possibly counting myself amongst those lucky ones,) and those that have just surrendered to the birds' glacial, North Sea glare and have quietly retreated from whichever territory they claim.

The seagulls of St Andrews are not to be joked around with. I bet if Richard Bach had lived in St Andrews at some point of his life, he would have really reconsidered the symbolism of the seagull for allegorical purposes.