Wednesday, November the 17th, 2004

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Practical Seagull Exercises

If you have a pet seagull, it is extremely important to ensure that it gets the requisite amount of exercise. Have you got any idea how dangerous it is for a seagull to become idle and listless? Many seabird doctors have, over the years, been driven to despair by the negligence of certain people who keep seagulls as pets. One such medic, whose name, by weird coincidence, is a perfect anagram of auk tern guillemot gull, has written a memoir in which he lambasts some of the feckless seaside-resort inhabitants whose gulls he came to tend. His language is at times violent, but what shines through the prose is a great love for seabirds and an almost pathological loathing of human beings.

In an appendix, the doctor recommends certain exercises which the responsible gull-keeper ought to encourage a bird to perform as part of its fitness regime. Mindful of the depressed economies of most coastal regions, all of the exercises are designed to cost little in the way of kit. For example, gull exercise number ten, reprinted below, involves nothing more than access to a limitless supply of corrugated cardboard:

Gull Exercise Number Ten

Fetch a few large sheets of corrugated cardboard and take them to your seagull. Announce in a loud voice that you will reward the bird with a bucket of fish-heads and entrails if it tears the corrugated cardboard to pieces with its fearsome beak. Stand well back. Most well-balanced seagulls will shred the corrugated cardboard in a matter of minutes. Note: if you do not actually have a bucket full of fish-heads and entrails with which to reward the gull at the end of its exercise, it may become angered and vengeful, so make sure you are wearing protective clothing and have removed all traces of fish-odour from yourself by bathing in lemon juice, or alternatively keeping as far away from the harbour as you can, especially at those times when the fishing boats come in to port with their catch of sprats and gudgeon.