East Coast
When I was young, in order to give my parents a break over the summer, my grandmother would take me and my siblings on holiday to a non-descript little seaside town on the east coast of the UK. It had all the standards, a decrepit arcade, loads of fish and chip shops and a rather nice stretch of beach.

But beneath the exterior lurked... a horror. Something that H. P. Lovecraft would have given his left testicle (and maybe even his right) to have caught but the barest glimpse of. The bravest man in the kingdom would have willingly licked John Major's quivering white buttocks before taking on this peril.

Seagulls. Winged demons of the most dreaded kind.

The scene was an utter farce, almost like something out of a cartoon. Visualise for yourself, a small innocent blond-haired little child happily rambling along the beach, with parents following a good fifty feet behind. This was back in the days when paedophiles didn't roam freely and swoop down on such children from the shadows and carry them off in their paedomobiles to be strapped into the Abuse-O-Mat 9000 (or at least that's what the Daily Mail wants me to believe).

Now, this child was carrying a sandwich. A few seagulls were following him. Occasionally, he would throw them a crumb or two. And they seemed to like it, pecking at it, then bouncing along after him. We watched as he passed out of sight under a pier.

Then we heard a scream. Full doppler effect as this red-faced creature, legs pounding like a steam engine ran back the way he came, screaming at the top of his lungs.

And following him was what seemed to my young mind, a biblical plague of seagulls that Moses himself would have been proud of. Though it was probably only about fifty or so. The sandwich was missing by this point, and we think he was lucky to have any fingers left.

Tragic, certainly, and likely to give a child a permanent phobia of birds. What was more amusing is when he made it back to Mum and Dad, who hadn't run after him... they were too busy pissing themselves with laughter, though thankfully we didn't crack up. The woman defended her scruffy little offspring with her bag - swinging it through the air again and again until the flock dispersed. And two or three stunned/dead seagulls lying on the beach. After a hug, the parents got another sandwich out of a rucksack and gave it to the boy. Who happily skipped along the beach again.

And went under the pier again.

This time we couldn't hold back the laughter and got a set of rather evil looks. Once they'd fought off the seagulls.
(calamarain just invented dehydrated water, Thu 24 Apr 2008, 18:27, 2 replies)

You'd think they'd have learned
after the first sarnie heist!
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 24 Apr 2008, 19:13, closed)

Morons
Yep. That's why it was so funny.
(calamarain just invented dehydrated water, Fri 25 Apr 2008, 9:42, closed)