The story of the “Bent Billed” Seagulls

One sunny day, Mr and Mrs Noah decided to treat themselves to a day trip to their local town, Gansbaai. Instead of just the usual, twice a week shopping trip, they planned to have lunch in town as well. So, once they had cleared up after the guests had left, off they went, leaving the animals in charge of The Ark.

Mango was told to look after Sid; Sid was told to look after Kitkat, and Kitkat wasn’t told to look after anyone, as she was fast asleep on the bed.

As they drove along the long road to town, Mr Noah said to Mrs Noah, “What do you fancy for lunch, Mrs Noah?”

“Ooh, what I would really like is a pie and some tasty chips, and to eat them down at the harbour, watching the boats.”

“Fair enough,” said Mr Noah, and they carried on until they reached the fish and chip shop.

So, half an hour later, two pies and two portions of chips had been bought, and Mr and Mrs Noah were sitting in their car overlooking the harbour mouth and the sea, watching the little boats bouncing around in the waves and the bigger ones chugging into harbour. After they had been admiring the view for a few minutes, Mr Noah said, “I’m getting hungry now, Mrs Noah. Shall we eat?”

“Yes, let’s.” Said Mrs Noah. And so they did.

It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the local seagulls, delightfully named “Hartlaubs gulls”, or so Mr Noah told Mrs Noah anyway! He liked to impress Mrs Noah and show her that he was picking up the names of local things and becoming more like a true South African every day! Lekker!

Now Mr Noah, liking all things fluffy and furry (and feathery) started to throw the odd chip out of the window for the gulls. Silly Mr Noah! Of course, you sensible readers realise that this is likely to attract quite a lot of seagulls and alert them to the possibility of a free lunch! Within seconds, they were flapping and squawking all around the car.

Mrs Noah was getting a little concerned about all this attention and asked Mr Noah to stop the feeding, please, and place the chips where the gulls couldn’t reach them. “OK,” said Mr Noah as he placed the open packet of chips on the dashboard of the car so they were not accessible to the gulls, but easy to reach for himself and Mrs Noah. He then returned to watching the gulls circle and dive around the car wondering where their free meal had gone.

Thud!

“Oh!” Mrs Noah called out!

Thud! Thud!

This was followed by a spine-tingling sound like fingernails scraping along a blackboard.

There above the windscreen was gull after gull diving at the open chip packet and slowly sliding down the windscreen clutching their slightly bent beaks!

“Well I never,” said Mr Noah. “What stupid gulls!”

“Well I never,” said Mrs Noah. “What a stupid place to put the chips.”

… Needless to say, after the chips had been removed, and the gulls had flown away, it took quite a while to clean the windscreen!