Herring gulls have discovered the dumpster behind Finagle-A-Bagel on Congress Street. Yesterday I saw only one, standing in the garbage with a cream cheese packet in its mouth. Today there were at least twenty, mostly dashing back and forth in front of the dumpster. A handful were watching from the top of a covered parking area, and the corrugated metal roof amplified their excited pacing.
There is nothing more hilarious than a seagull dragging a whole everything bagel around a parking lot. Even though the bags in the dumpster had been ripped wide open and the bagel supply therein was nearly limitless, the gulls prefer chasing after the excavated spoils rather than acquiring their own. A speckled brown juvenile tore off a piece of another bird’s meal, swallowed it whole rather than surrender it to higher-ranking animals, and then stood still, possibly quite alarmed, with a half-moon wedge of bread bulging out of its neck like some kind of gluten-filled goiter.
I left the parking lot and crossed the Summer Street bridge, and there were two more gulls in the channel, one juvenile and one adult. The younger bird was swimming back and forth in front of the other, turning each time the elder did, the way people walking towards each other negotiate passing by uselessly starting right and left in synchrony. Except this bird was clearly doing it on purpose. When the adult gave up and took to the air, the younger one followed right behind. I quickly lost sight of them because seagulls do not conduct their business on a human scale.