Angry Birds

I have never before today wanted to dropkick an animal. I crossed that threshold thanks to the seagull that stole my finger sandwich at The Opera House. It wasn't just that the dollar at an all-time low coupled with the already ridiculously high prices here in Australia made my sister and me deliberate far too long about spending $7 AUD on four finger sandwiches to share. It wasn't that today was the wettest April day Sydney has seen in a decade and we had just found a warm, dry spot with a nice view of the bridge to enjoy said sandwiches. Or that we'd just trekked up to the Opera House in the pouring rain to find out that this was the one day a year they give free tours and...wait for it...they were all booked up. It wasn't even that we were both pretty hungry. It was that this was an act of terrorism.

This bird was mean and calculating and it targeted us long before we became aware of it's presence. If I didn't know seagulls were equal opportunity scavengers and I didn't think they were idiots, I'd suspect this was a hate crime the way we were singled out amongst several other diners around us. We had just sat down and split the first of our four sandos when it came out of nowhere (i.e. it's sniper's perch) and popped up staring me down first with it's cold, beady eyes. Then, it flew up directly over my sister's head flapping it's wings wildly kicking up her hair and distracting us from it's intended target. Before we knew what had hit it us, it swooped in making a surgical strike at our sandwich tray snatching up two neighboring halves, effectively stealing a whole sandwich from us. Spattering my bag with sandwich guts it disappeared as swiftly as it had appeared leaving a trail of mayo and carrot shavings to verify to us that, "Yes, that did just really happen." Descending upon the ground next to our table -- not nearly far enough away from us given the offense committed and the huge advantage we have in size -- the robber may have been subsequently robbed of it's loot before it hit the ground. It's not clear. There was a flurry of activity as one seagull suddenly became many, scrambling for a piece of the prize.

What happened next is what sent me over the edge from highly offended and irritated to violently murderous. One of those flying a-holes, and it may have been the original culprit, flew back up to our table. Landing on the seat back of the chair between us, sitting almost at our eye-level it squawked -- no, shrieked at us threateningly flapping it's wings as if -- as if to shoo us away from the rest of our sandwiches! Insult to injury. And I was still sitting there in shock.

Terror begets terror and I really and truly wanted to kick that bird's ass along with the rest of it's cohorts. The birds in Sydney are aggressive and angry and someone needs to remind them just how small they are and how terribly humans can behave.