The Thief!

   I have a soft heart when it comes to our critter friends that live about the Bayou.  If one is hurt, I try to remedy that.  If one looks a tad hungry, I feed it.  It just comes naturally to those of us who adore wildlife and wish to help keep them healthy and happy. For the past few weeks, I have been feeding the injured heron on a regular basis.  It comes flying in whenever it sees me on the pier.  I feel that this bird knows me and does not fear me.  That makes it far easier to care for the bird.  But I do not only feed this bird.  Egrets, herons, gulls, rails, pelicans, ducks, geese..you name it, I have probably at least tried to coax it near enough to be fed.  

  Here lately, a stately egret has been begging for handouts along with the heron.  This bird is not hurt but still thinks it should share in the wealth. This causes me to have to throw the net a few more times to catch enough for two hungry mouths but I do not complain.  I do, however, have a "bone to pick" with a seagull!  That rascal is never happy.  Whenever the other birds are feeding, they usually are good about only snatching the fish that I throw to them.  It is almost like they share.  Not that seagull!  That varmint will swoop down and snatch fish right out of the beaks of the other birds!  

  Seagulls are known to be thieves.  They are brave enough to snatch tidbits not only from human hands but from animals that are known as predators.  A gull is sometimes brazen enough to steal a tidbit from an alligator.  That takes nerves of steel or a great lack of intelligence.  The one gull that comes to badger the poor egret gets its share of the mullet that I toss on the pier.  It swoops in, grabs the piece of fish and hurries off before the egret is even aware of what is happening.  I have to be careful that it is not the only one that dines in the evening.  Share and share alike, Gull!