BOOTY AND THE BEAST

Well it's finally summer here on Martha's Vineyard. The beach is beckoning, the boat"s in the water and the calendar is filling up with visitors. We live for this time of year!


BOOTY AND THE BEAST

It’s the kind of thing you would never expect to happen twice. One day last September after Labor Day, when the summer people ceded the Island back to the year-rounders, my friend Jules and I went for a little R and R at South Beach. At lunch time Jules pulled out a perfectly constructed Italian hoagy. Having just taken a second delicious bite, out of the blue--or rather over his left shoulder--a seagull swooped in and grabbed Jules’s sandwich. You would think this a once in a lifetime event, no? Well, actually, no. It happened again this week. Same place, same Italian hoagy, and for all we know, the same seagull. The bird consumed everything but the tomato.
We’ve all laughed heartily at these precocious birds appropriating other people’s lunches, but it’s not so funny when it’s your own. These gulls, protected by the state in order to keep the beaches clean, have developed the perfect scam. The only time they eat what God intended is when the sunbathers go home for the season. And then only if they can’t find a convenient dumpster. I know a woman who feeds them whole wheat bread because she thinks they eat too much junk food.
I think Jules is a target because he tends to eat around 11:30 (a hold over from his college days when he was too tired to go for breakfast). The birds are hungry, not having eaten since the previous day’s lunch, so he is the first victim of the day. Apparently people on the beach are not the only prey for these petty thieves. The very next morning after this avian piracy took place, there was an item on the TV news about a seagull that hangs around a 7-11 store somewhere in New Hampshire and stages a daily raid in the chip aisle. He always takes Doritos.
These events started me thinking about larceny in the animal kingdom. With the possible exception of vermin and birds that steal objects for their nests, most animal burglary is restricted to food. I’ve learned, for example, never to leave a tray of hors d’oevres unattended on the coffee table awaiting guests if the dog is in the house. My particular dog has what they euphemistically call the “wolf gene” and would gleefully eat himself to death if left to his own devices. You can imagine the begging that goes on in my house. I’ve seen him sniff all over a bag of garbage until he finds something appealing, then bite a hole just large enough to extract the coveted morsel. I should be grateful he’s so neat, I suppose. I used to keep a candy dish filled with Hershey Kisses in my living room for guests until I came home one day to a little pile of aluminum foil on the rug, more of which I’m sure he ingested.
When I was a kid (my parents being products of the Depression) we had a quarter of an acre of land that we gardened each summer. I can’t count the number of times my father would announce that something was ready to be harvested then go out the next day to find whatever it was decimated. One year a herd of deer came through and systematically demolished our sweet corn crop. Something with hands--a groundhog? possum?--pulled out every last beet in the row, carefully laying the greens aside. To be fair to the animals my father always maintained it was one of the neighbors.
We wouldn’t have minded sharing our crops if they just took--say--one melon and ate the whole thing, but for some reason they seemed to enjoy taking a bite out of each one. I guess it’s kind of like the people who stick their finger in the bottom of a chocolate to see what the filling is. If it’s maple cream they put it back into the box right side up. Maybe the melons weren’t ripe enough. My brother and I knew why the animals never touched a zucchini.
Jules and I are planning another trip to the beach. This time he’s taking a tomato sandwich.