FoxMom23's Blog

    If you were to ask a child what he/she likes about the beach, what would you expect to get for an answer?  I would expect the usual answers-- digging in the sand and building sand castles, playing in the ocean or tidal pools, looking for crabs and shells and other marine life, etc.

     Well, if you were to ask my 2 year old what he likes about the beach, he may tell you, although you may not be able to understand him yet, any or all of those things. But do you know what entertains him more than anything else?  The seagulls. Yup, you read that right. Seagulls. I don’t care what else he’s doing-- splashing in the tidal pools, playing in, and eating, the sand, kicking a ball around-- as soon as he realizes there are seagulls on the beach he gets totally distracted. It’s not so much that he likes to watch them (after all they are not that interesting). No, he likes to chase them. And I’m not talking about chasing them for a few feet and then leaving them alone. Oh no, he will chase one until it flies away. The last time we were at the beach, with some family members and friends, we watched him chase a seagull about the length of a football field, more or less. (It was hard to tell exactly how far, because it’s not like he or the seagull ran in a straight line). Fortunately for me, my husband’s uncle was chasing him, so I got to sit back and just laugh at the sight. Of course, we all expected the gull to fly away much sooner than he did, but apparently he was having fun being chased.

    When the seagull finally did fly away, my son came back to us and started to play again, but then he discovered another seagull, all by itself, on the other side of us, and the chase was on again!!  It was very funny and entertaining to us, and to most of the people around us, apparently, because they were all watching the chase. But the determination with which he chased those seagulls has me worried. He really wants to catch one. I can just imagine him coming up to my husband and I one day, holding a poor seagull, and with that pleading puppy dog look in his eyes, asking “Mom and Dad, I found him on the beach, can I keep him? Pleeeeeeeeeease?????”

And so I ask… does anyone know how to care for a seagull?