Shoplifters
I expected it to be the raccoons, as I have seen the occasional grubby paw print on the bakery display table in the morning. Yes, we have raccoons on Matinicus, and no, we shouldn’t. Raccoons are not natural denizens of this island, but are an invasive species deliberately introduced a number of years ago by a known individual with malice aforethought, his point being entirely to mess with people. Anyway, it wasn’t them.
I also would not have been terribly surprised had it been a couple of the local pups who’d got into the baked goods in the outdoor, farm-stand-style, honor-system retail set-up in my dooryard. Matinicus Island is doggie heaven, and so many of the island human residents are in the habit of keeping their pockets filled with dog biscuits that Fido is getting sort of beamy. But no--the dogs who run loose have not yet discovered that nobody is paying attention, and that they could pretty easily make off with a bag of doughnuts. Let’s hope they don’t read the papers. It wasn’t the ubiquitous rats either, descendants of stowaways who arrived by steamship and sailing vessel, or the highly intelligent corvids who talk to each other and could undoubtedly engineer a complicated larceny. To my knowledge, it has never been the kids, despite what the cranks and cynics say about “honor system” as an established business practice.
It was the gulls.
Last week I stepped out the kitchen door to find four seagulls on the lawn surrounding a cinnamon roll (well, actually a “cinnamon-butter knot.”) They had worked the Saran wrap off one end of it and had started eating. I proceeded to shout and rave and roar and throw things, and away they went, although they didn’t go far. They circled and I swore, loudly, creating excessive disturbance which undoubtedly attracted the attention of Ann and John next door (I’m not worried about them. He shoots rats in broad daylight too, startling me, so we’re on the same page). I moved the cinnamon rolls and everything else farther from the opening of the big white tent which shelters the bakery offerings and went back to work.
A short time later I heard the tell-tale stomping on the roof: that thieving pack of winged marauders was back and had been shopping. Bypassing more convenient offerings, such as bread, they had not taken the closest item but rather had selected their specific preference --another cinnamon knot--and dropped it in the same place on the lawn to unwrap. With my best Bugs Bunny accent I bellowed, “Of course you realize, this means war!” Paul came home for lunch about that time, heard call the yelling, and got out the shells for the .410 shotgun.
Blasting them wouldn’t be the answer, though, given present circumstances. A yard full of strangers, and what would such mayhem do to my reputation among my 5- and 10-year-old customers? I built a fence of step ladders in front of the bakery tent (because of course everybody has all kinds of extra step ladders around) and found an old roll of surveyor’s tape to make an array of obnoxious hot-pink dangling streamers in hopes that would discourage them. It did.
I know, I know—we all like hearing the gulls at dawn, and they are iconic to our Maine coast, and they are, indeed, protected. Please don’t write to me with a strident lecture about allowing these birds to ruin their diets with white sugar and non-organic butter. I am the one aggrieved here; not them.
I like watching birds, listening to birds, and learning about birds as much as anybody else. Avian behavior patterns, should one study this stuff, are rife with swindles, scams, petty crime and kleptoparasitism (my new favorite word, as evidenced by a previous column). Technically, and despite the acknowledged linguistic legitimacy of common usage, there is no such things as a “seagull.” They are gulls--many kinds of gulls—and if a seagull, then why not a dumpgull as well? This is beyond my rate as a science correspondent, and one can only wonder about the shivers and fits of the ornithologist who hears “seagle-rhymes-with-eagle.” A morning in Maine, at least this part of Maine, would be bereft without the wheeling and the noise and the dance and the comedy of these shorebirds. A gull at a distance is a beautiful thing. A gull up close is another matter.
The birds who loiter around the bakery are not Jonathan Livingston Seagull; they’re more like Baby-Face Nelson Seagull. The whole idea might be charming from a distance, but they’re crooked as a dog’s hind leg. There is nothing poetic or Zen-like about a large avian shoplifter helping himself to your cinnamon rolls. Besides, they’ve got weird eyes.
Published in the Rockland, Maine Free Press August, 2022