Frankie

[Deb]

When we moved here three years ago, we were adopted by a herring gull. At first we called it Frank but when we found out it was female, we called it Frankie. We could have called it Frances but one of my husband's fellow-patients at dialysis is Frances. It would have seemed somehow disrespectful to call the herring gull Frances, so Frankie it is. We gave her whatever scraps we happened to have and she turned up every day, either at the kitchen window or if I was outside, in the back garden. She expected to be fed and she generally was and it became a contract.

She had a husband – herring gulls mate for life – and though he was not quite so bold as she was, he too would turn up looking expectant. He is a handsome gull with an exceptionally long neck. We called him Neck but that didn't really suit him, so we added a K to make him Kneck. The K is pronounced. The first year they turned up with three youngsters in the spring. One, sadly, was killed on the road but we fed the other two as well. After all, they're family. This year, they had two chicks. Young herring gulls, once they have learned that you are a source of food, approach with a begging posture, bobbing their heads and peeping plaintively. This posture gave rise to their names: Ichabod and Ebenezer. They turned up for daily feeding and are expert at catching morsels of food. Gulls have nearly all-round vision which helps them to snatch things out of the air. They became astonishingly tame but only with us. Seagulls can tell people apart, it seems. There comes a point, during the winter, when the young gulls decide they are adult and leave to make their way in the world.

Smartie, our cat, did not approve of us feeding the gulls. The little songbirds that we feed, that's OK. She thinks of that as ground-bait but feeding seagulls is morally wrong. Once or twice she's made a charge at them but each time when she was getting close she aborted the manoeuvre. They were just too big and there was a challenging look in their beady eyes. She limits herself now to fixing us with her schoolmarm disapproving eye and mewing reproachfully when we feed the herring gulls.

It's breeding season. Kneck and Frankie arrived at the kitchen window this morning. I was busy in the kitchen and not paying any attention to them until they started making strange staccato cries. Fearing one was injured, I looked out the window and they were having sex. Birdwatchers, who prefer a delicate phrase, would say "the male was treading the female." There was evidently great enjoyment.

Translated, their cries were something like this:
"Oh Frankie, your cloaca is so exciting!"
"Kneck, your big flappy feet are such a turn-on. Tread me harder!"

I could continue in this vein but you would take me for a pervert. Evidently the birds did because I assume that their having sex outside my window was a reward for feeding them and their progeny. The cycle continues. I hope to be around to feed a new generation of Frankie's kids.