For the tail end of March, you couldn’t ask for a prettier, albeit cold, walking day. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was shining.  That sunshine really made me feel good, even though I still needed my woolen layers and heavy coat in the chilly morning air.

I took the car for a spin, and thought about going to Council Point Park while I was driving by, but, I had not brought along any peanuts and hated to disappoint my “followers”, so I finished my little journey, tucked the car in the garage and then set out on a walk. I decided on a round trip to the railroad tracks, a nearly four-mile excursion.

On the way back, as I neared the footbridge at Riverside Drive , I saw some commotion in the middle of the street. There was a puddle in a pothole near the curb and a trio of seagulls were standing at the edge of the puddle, clearly engrossed in studying that pool of water.  Curious, I stopped.  All of a sudden, a small fish leapt out of the puddle and did a somersault in the air.  One seagull lunged for that fish, its long and curved beak slowly opening as it honed in for the “catch”.  But, the other two seagulls never missed a beat and they, too, crowded in and opened their beaks in breathless anticipation of breakfast, each of them thinking “oh, how I wish I could have that fish!”

Well, it is the Lenten season after all.

One seagull grew tired of waiting around and dipped its beak into the puddle and caught that hapless fish by the tail. But the fish rallied back and flipped and flopped until it managed to wriggle free from the seagull’s beak, but this time it landed in the middle of the street.  Oh-oh.  While that fish kept gasping for air and flailing about, each of the seagulls had a go at it, but clearly the fish, who sensed its fate was near, continued to thwart their efforts to catch it.  Finally, the fish let its guard down, gasped, and the wily gull grabbed ahold of the fish and flipped him in the air like he was a flapjack.

The bleeding heart that I am, I started rooting for the fish. I wanted to pluck him out of harm’s way and throw him into the Creek!

I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay, and, I could have pulled out the camera to catch the antics, but it involved unzipping my coat, and pushing aside the scarf and a cardigan to access the camera case – way too much effort, and truly, did I really want to capture the image of these greedy gulls and the unfortunate fish?

Finally, the fish stopped floundering and one gull seized that opportunity and soon had clasped the near-lifeless body between its beak. In one swoop, he took off, before his compadres could steal that prize from him.  Soon he was just a white blip in the perfect blue sky and I moseyed along as well.

[Image from OpenClipArt.org]