birds - mooring mindersAn end to mooring minders

by David Everdell

Slaughterhouse Sally, the sentinel seagull sits nesting among the stench of the faeces covered fly-bridge on a squalid and slimy ‘mooring minder’ and I am in the sad situation of being her neighbour.
She has taught me that the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds (in which seagulls take over an entire town and commence to kill people), was not the result of a fertile imagination. He was telling the truth. It was simply the result of Hitchcock’s observations as to what happens around nesting time in any seaside village.
As both me in my unstable little dinghy on the way to my boat and the day of the birth of Sally’s chick get nearer, she sends out increasingly hideous screeches that summon up an airborne squadron of murderous crap-ejecting kamikazes who, with unnerving and unquestioning loyalty, commence their bombing runs at me from all quarters with a timing and precision that would have made the Red Baron turn green with envy.
Most animals run for cover when humans approach. I have to admit, that as much as I hate them, the fact that, like humans, seagulls have the ability to gather up armies and retaliate when danger approaches sort of fascinates me.
Finally the chick is born and soon starts to stumble around the deck all day trying to fly. Trouble is that the big glass windows on the ‘mooring minder’ reflect the sky and it keeps flying up and into them until it’s exhausted.
Slaughterhouse’s husband and loving father, Sultry Sam, gets sick of this and decides to kill the chick while Sally looks on and does nothing. The kid is obviously a dud so Sultry’s mates join in and tear feathers off the chick and try to pluck out its eyes.
Foolishly I came up with cunning plan to prey upon that other characteristic they share with humans … out and out greed. I threw food scraps around and watched as they turned on one another in their fight to get them. The chick is virtually dead and my attempts to push it somewhere safer only cause it to fall in the engine hold, never to be seen again.
Now the entire seagull population of my area thinks I killed the chick. You have to admire their communication network too.
No matter where I am, day or night, near my boat or on the beach or even out on the street they single me out. Every ‘wanna-be top gun’ seagull has images of my head, front, top and side imprinted in their tiny little seed-size brain so they can use me for target practice.
The chick stumbles around the deck all day trying to fly. Trouble is that the big glass windows on the ‘mooring minder’ reflect the sky and it keeps flying up and into them until it’s exhausted.On a much more serious note, somewhere up in the hills surrounding the bay, are dozens and dozens of people who have either had moorings bequeathed to them or out of sheer greed have bought them with no intention of using them.
They simply buy an old discarded boat, known as a ‘mooring minder’, and put it on their mooring so no one else can use it. Then they invite people over for dinner and a glass of wine so that they can tell them about the yacht and mooring they own … only its not a yacht, it’s a ‘seagull rookery’ from which these vermin set about their dastardly deeds, destroying boat covers and crapping on my head.
Originally people just moored where ever they wanted but things became congested so some order was bought to the situation and specific areas and plots organized and run by the governing bodies. Never slow to keep up with the Joneses, those that could afford it just bought them, and the dinghy racks too, so that they could add them to their property value. There are hundreds and hundreds of them out there all over New South Wales going to waste while genuine boat owners who want to actually go sailing queue up waiting for a mooring to become available.
Sultry SamNow here’s the interesting point. In any other similar situation that wouldn’t be allowed to happen. Let’s say people just started buying old cars so they could dump them in the street in case they wanted that parking spot at a latter date and ‘keep the riff raff out’. Big orange stickers would be put on them and they would be removed.
Sultry Sam decides to kill the chick while Sally looks on and does nothing.Should we perhaps consider a ‘use it or loose it’ policy with moorings so that responsible people who will use bird deterrents such as garden ‘humming lines (which I’m about to cover both my boat and myself with), end up getting the moorings they deserve? Does anyone over the age of 10 actually like seagulls and is there such a thing as an ASS, Anti-Seagull Society, I can join?