It's hilarious how she can't breathe with how hard she's laughing.
The huge gull, Handsome, dive-bombs the other birds, pushes them aside, and shoves his whole face into the platter, knocking it into her lap.
Her legs are crossed, the food now literally steaming on her thighs, and the bird doesn’t care at all. He just starts eating right by her crotch.
She is cracking up. I’m cracking up.
“I think they're going to end up eating us too if we don’t drop the food,” I manage between breaths.
“Oh my God just—” she starts, but the birds erupt in screeching.
“Skkkeee skeeeugh!” one shrieks in a high pitch.
Handsome has a challenger. Another young male. The two seagulls go right at it as there's a big chunk of pork right there for them to eat. A younger seagullsees an opportunity, and since those two are fighting, he might as well seize it for the pork.
Then there is a full feeding frenzy, where there are about 20 seagulls now, and the number is growing. I have no idea where the hell the other seagulls even came from, but now there are like forty of them, as well as some other tinier birds joining in the fray.
“Now that I think about it this probably wasn't the best idea,” I say, holding my hands over my head, trying to protect myself from being shat on and from the flutter of feathers battering me in the face as the seagulls all fight.
The seagulls are so tame and used to us by now that they land on us on occasion and even on my lap as well. Swear to God, there are two of them fighting right on my lap, wings stretched out, battering each other, and all I can see is a blur of white and gray and sometimes specks of orange when their beaks enter the frame of my vision.
The wings don’t hurt because they're so lightweight, but they make that whooshing noise that every flapping wing makes, and it sounds very loud being this close, especially when it smacks me. With them all flapping their wings in the fray, they make the air feel colder.
All we can do is sit there. Gabby is still laughing her ass off, until there is a flurry of black, and something large with wings dive-bombs between us, causing one of the seagulls to screech loudly before it’s hauled off into the air.
“What the hell was that?” I ask, confused.
“Oh no. Yeah, I’m going to go back to the car,” Gabby says, looking nervous, chuckling with unease.
The seagulls don’t even care. They’re still all fighting with each other, and I follow behind her.
After we both escape the cloud of fighting seagulls and creatures now trying to take over the two big platters of food and haulingoff pieces of it, we both look back to see what had come between us.
A bald eagle.
A bald freaking eagle had straight up crashed the party and grabbed its own Christmas present, which was one of the seagulls.
I shudder, thinking that if that bird had been super large, I probably would have ended up like that seagull, because nobody would have heard or seen it coming.
“I’m so sorry, oh my God,” I say, thinking Gabby is going to feel bad that one of her friends got eaten.
“It wasn’t Handsome. I’m okay. It’s the circle of life. I know that eagle as well.”
“You know the eagle too?” I ask incredulously, partly in shock.
“I mean… no. I nicknamed him Fisher, and I only see him on occasion. I actually think it’s a female because of how big it is, but I’ve seen her around.”
“So you’re okay with her eating the seagulls?”
“I’m not okay with her eating them and I’m not NOT okay with her eating them. It’s the circle of life, but I would be sad if it was Handsome.”
On the drive home, after we both talk up a storm and crack up at the whole ordeal, we pull into the driveway and I shut off the car.
Taking a deep sigh, I lean my head back against the seat headrest.
“Thank you. This was a beautiful Christmas,” Gabby says softly to me.
When I open my eyes and look over to my right, she’s smiling at me. Her left hand takes my right, which had been resting on my thigh, and she closes her fingers gently around it.
