i hope the msg upsets your stomach.
Does he look innocent?
Because he’s not.
Today, I hung out at Granville Island with my mom. We had a Mom-Daughter day. I love spending time with her.
Another thing we love?
Chinese food!
Granted, it’s not always authentic, correct cuisine. Sometimes it looks like it’s coated in jam or shellac or lip gloss.
But, damn. That’s some tastiness.
So, today, while hanging out, we decided to get two plates of the good stuff and sit outside, along with our Snapples and the ongoing conversation about decorating my apartment and why I’ve become obsessed with pink and brown or pale blue and brown colour combinations in all my personal environments.
We got our food.
It looked AMAZING.
We left the building.
Ten feet out of the door, I was attacked by six of the largest seagulls you’ve ever seen. The crowd around us on benches and boardwalk gasped and screamed. My mother ran to the side with her plate.
They a) took off with my chicken balls in their beaks; b) knocked my chow mein to the cement; and c) gathered all the birds in the world — starlings, crows, pigeons, probably a flamingo — to pick at my ginger beef on the ground.
I was so shell-shocked that I just kept walking. And we walked all the way to a bench thirty feet away, where we shared my mother’s lunch. I said, “Shit.” about twenty-two times. People dropped by with condolences.
Then, only moments later, my mom bought me a small, pink vinyl hippo.
We named her Polly.
Polly Vinyl.
Get it?
I WANT MY LUNCH BACK, YOU MANGY BASTARDS.
August 19th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
We call them shit-hawks and I hate them. I actually avoid Granville Island because of their slanty eyed, beaky evilness.
Very sorry for your chicken balls.
August 19th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Imagine how the chicken feels, all ball-less and stuff. (Would that be a rooster?)
You funny!
August 19th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Oh, my God! An Alfred Hitchcock moment. Quick pretend you are Tippi Hedren.
August 20th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Polly Vinyl… I don’t know if she’ll ever meet “Elizabeth Tailored”… the cloth doll Meaghan named because she noticed it had violet colored buttons for eyes-and it was–tailored!!(Miss Tailored lives in storage.)
Also–It was the universal gasp and squeal immediate to the incident that got me! That and people clutching their young to themselves!!We won’t discuss Meg’s repeated expletive. Somehow it didn’t lose it’s meaning as words often do when you say them over and over again!
August 20th, 2006 at 9:58 am
They are absolute bastards & I speak as one particularly well disposed to birds. A farmer friend in Devon told me about seagulls taking the eyes out of his lambs. In St Ives in Cornwall - one of my all-time favourite parts of the world - they prey regularly on those dining, as you were, al fresco. And there have been reports of actual attacks on people attempting to defend their fish & chips! And in Connemara we watched them daily mobbing lone herons & cormorants foolish enough to hang about on rocks on their own.
Congratulations on your verbal restraint, Meg!
August 20th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Goddamn seagulls! Rats with wings, I calls ‘em. (But I love Polly!)
August 21st, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Damn seagulls! Don’t nobody mess with my chicken balls.
I need a polly!