About halfway through our tour of the nations we were in England and we felt hungry. Each of us, at the same time, saw a fish and chips “shoppe” and without even a word to each other headed over with our mouths watering at the thought of a great lunch to share. When we walked into the small restaurant we noticed all the tables were full so after ordering we looked around and saw a bunch of empty tables outside right by the lake. Excited at the thought of eating by the lake we took our food to go and headed out to what looked like the perfect table to enjoy our fare.

Slowly we sat down and  made ourselves comfortable; everything seemed strangely quiet and calm. We opened up the paper covering that was wrapped around our fish and chips. My son opened up the small container of tarter sauce and set it to the side. We each picked up a french fry and began to eat; it was delicious, I must say. Not halfway through our first fry we both noticed a strange noise. It sounded like a bird screaming, then we heard two birds screaming and seconds later it sounded like hundreds of birds screaming. All of a sudden we were surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of seagulls all fighting for our lunch. Try as we might to fight for our food the birds were stronger and faster than we were. One even plucked the fry from my son’s hand, leaving a little mark on his finger. The whole event took less than a minute but by the time it was over they had taken everything from us – the fish, the chips, the paper it was wrapped in and the container of tarter sauce.  They left us without as much as a crumb  to try. We both sat there stunned, trying to understanding what had just happened.

We got up, our hunger somehow no longer an issue for either of us and silently continued on our way.  A few minutes later my young son looked at me and said, “Well, at least this is the happiest place on earth for the birds”. To this day my son fears eating food anywhere near seagulls.