Seagulls Don’t Like Lettuce

In an alternative reality, this blog post would have been about the awesome experience I had with my children watching the sun set over the beach … how we’d all lounged together peacefully atop the quilt Granny Solomon had stitched for Henry when he was born … eaten freshly-picked strawberries and Trader Joe’s snacks … watched the sky turn from blue to orange to night … all while humming Kumbaya. But the real story of what unfolded the day we sought the sunset is slightly different, and more bird-brained.

For one thing, we’d picked up “freshly made” Subway sandwiches and Doritos for our picnic dinner. And for another, the tune we’d been rocking out to on our drive was “Sunglasses at Night” (we’re in a collective Corey Hart phase right now).

In fact, the song was still running through my head as we laid down Granny’s blanket (that part is true), because I remember being surprised at how blindingly bright and high the sun still was at 6:15 p.m. It was scheduled to set at 8:11 p.m. A lot of earthly rotation needed to happen in two hours, I thought to myself.

We sat down and unwrapped our sandwiches. Henry and Sadie split a foot-long tuna sub, as always, and, it was a complete and immediate mess, as always: mayonnaised tuna fish smeared on cheeks and fingers, strands of shredded lettuce falling to the blanket like confetti, flimsy pickles stuck in the sand. The good news is that while moms do not love messes, seagulls live for them.

Within seconds, a gang of five silver-backed gulls inched toward us, led by a particularly hungry-looking elder with red eyes and ruffled feathers. We were easy targets because the crowd of beach-goers had dissipated substantially by that time. When Sadie, the bird lady, saw the gulls, she dropped her sandwich, stood up and started dancing and clapping. Her convulsions did nothing to faze the scavengers. The pack separated, but only in order to surround the blanket on all sides. They stood at a safe but still intimidating two feet from us, tamping their gray toes in the sand and periodically squawking their demands for food. Sadie and Henry squawked back, and I could see in their eyes how much they wanted to share their dinner with the birds.

“Don’t feed them,” I said. “If you feed them, more will come.”

As soon as I spoke those words, I regretted it. What I should have said was, “If you feed them, they will go away and never come back, and won’t that be sad?” But it was too late.

Henry started throwing food to the gulls … but the boy loves a Subway tuna sub, so what he threw to the gulls was … lettuce. He just scooped up all he could off the bread and tossed it at them. The birds nearly collided heads darting for the shreds of lettuce, each one greedily grabbing a mouthful.

To my surprise, just as quickly as they’d gobbled them up, they’d spit them back out. Seagulls don’t like lettuce! Mother Nature’s trash collectors don’t like lettuce. They’re not big fans of pickle either. The birds waddled backward in the sand, disappointed.

Suddenly, I felt bad we’d let them down.

I looked at Sadie who had taken three bites out of her sandwich. I knew she wouldn’t finish it. I also knew the kids wanted to see the birds happy (or maybe I did). So, I broke my own rule. I opened up her sandwich and scooped out some seriously generous portions of tuna and flung them toward the gulls, divvying up the food as fairly as I could: first to the elder, then to each of the younger birds.

“What seagulls really like is tuna,” I said.

“Yeah,” Henry said. “Seagulls love tuna!”

We all joined in, feeding the seagulls probably more than what any of us actually ate. (Seagulls like Doritos, too.) Luckily, we did not draw a huge flock of other seagulls. As you know, seagulls can be aggressive and downright dangerous sometimes. A Jersey Shore gull once stole a whole funnel cake right out of my sister-in-law’s hands in Atlantic City. They aren't the cleanest birds around either. But, these twilight gulls of ours were pretty friendly, all things considered. Sadie, of course, was over-the-moon with the experience.

Speaking of the moon, we never made it long enough to see the moon rest over the beach that night. After dinner, the kids played in the surf a little, but eventually Sadie became too tired to tolerate the beach. She hung on my leg crying. She laid herself in the low tide and moaned. She dipped her pacifier in the sand and stuck it back in her mouth, then cried more. I had no choice but to abort the sunset mission.

Still, we enjoyed our dinner with the gulls. When we got home, I was able to sneak in one book with sleepy Sadie: “Salty Seagull: A Tale of an Old Salt,” by Suzanne Tate. Sadie closed her eyes before the last page, but she still had a smile on her face.