"Seagull Eye"
It's funny how much enjoyment you can gather from watching a bunch of crazy birds do their daily routines. My friends and I sat in Ruby's car eating hamburgers and fries as a down pour was occuring. We tossed out french fries here and there out the windows to watch the seagulls flying over us scatter to the ground of the pier and fight for the french fries. It's not like any other fight, you see beaks flying at the fry, trying to grab it, and fly away before the other competitors get ahold of it. A single french fry could be sitting there for a good forty-five seconds while three or four seagulls all jock for position to nab their delightful little snack.
Seagulls where I live would remind you of vultures where some others live. They feed off whatever they can find and when a visitor or tourists comes in town they eat what the visitors toss to them. The seagulls where I live are ugly too! Their feathers are stained by all sorts of brown discolorations. When you think of seeing a seagull you'd picture it to be white with some greyish and black areas on it. Not where I live. They are all nasty brown colored like they bath in the mud.
Watching a seagull or any bird alone bathe is quite the site. They stick their faces and heads in the water and shake it around. Back and forth mutiple times dunking it in, shaking it around, and then pulling it back out to repeat the same steps over and over again. You can become mesmorized by enjoyment when watching it happen.
It would be quite extravagant to see what the seagulls see as they fly over the ocean. Even the view from their nests must be a nice one. To soar over the ocean like they do and take in all the scenery as they see it would be interesting to me.
"My friends and I sat in Ruby's car eating hamburgers..." I love that willingness in a writer to trust the reader a little. We do not need to know who Ruby is and to jump in like you do is a good move. In fact, that could be the first sentence of the whole piece--get into it fast!
ReplyDeleteI like that description of fighting gulls and I like the way you slag them in the next two grafs for their dirty plumage and habits. This is not the Seagull Appreciation Society, and anything goes.
For what it's worth, I think the last graf does not work, that it's a tacked-on graf that comes from a writer being stuck, not feeling that there's 'enough' but knowing there has to be some kind of closure. But that last graf is really a different topic. We're watching from Ruby's car with you, not flying around.
Any ideas for a stronger closing graf?
That is 100% correct on the final graf. I reread it and realized I completely changed topic. Will add a stranger closing graf. Is everything else okay so far?
ReplyDelete