birds of a feather

The biggest thing I've always missed about being away from home is not having my own pet about. Living in Holland, I've been lucky enough to benefit from the presence of Amaya – a cat who occasionally passes through my room and showers me with her feline charisma and fur in equal measure. At long last, however, I'm happy to report that I have a pet whom I can claim partial ownership of. I suppose one could say that I have a stake in this investment, but it's much more in line with the values and principles of where I work to say that we have a shared sense of possession. While one of my two Boss Ladies was trekking around the Eastern Hemisphere for the last month, my other two office mates and I adopted a seagull. Or maybe she adopted us. Either way, it's time for me to share the newest addition to the Fun Office with the Fruit (bowl).




Meet Sally. The sexy and sarcastic (but still salubrious) Seagull. Every day since the 16th of April, Sally visits our balcony on the 6th floor of the Metropole Building. Boss Lady Number Two did some research on the characteristics of gulls, and the red marking on Sally's beak apparently means that she is breeding. In addition to being an interesting factoid, this also explains why she made her first appearance at our office on a Thursday (right after Hump Day). Anyway, this discovery immediately instilled a sense of responsibility for the entire brood, so we trotted off to the kitchen in search of bread. When this was gobbled up and followed by a boisterous caw of thanks, we decided that Sally may be in need of a more comprehensive diet, and decided on the traditional seafaring one after discovering that we couldn't persuade her to become a vegetarian. Boss Lady Number Two went off to our neighbourhood grocer and bought some crab sticks. This pattern has escalated, and we now have a balcony that is covered with gull poop and taramosalata, which was apparently such a big hit with Sally that she told all of her friends about the dining experience. I suppose it shouldn't have come as a surprise in the information age, but the wire got so hot that even the crows heard about it. Our balcony has thus started to resemble a lunch counter in Tennessee during the 60s due to the riotous caws, swoops and attacks that we – the 'conflict prevention people' – have managed to create.

While I'm impressed that Sally manages to hang out with us for about 70% of our workday, I'm worried that she's seeing other people. Our relationship is starting to deteriorate because she wants more than I'm able to offer and is very vocal about her wishes. She's even taking her frustrations out on our building, and Distinguished Deskmate Jenny thought that someone was breaking into the office last week when she tried to gain entry through a window upstairs around 8pm. Recently, she's taken to staring at us while we work and I've found that my mind drifts to worrying about her wellbeing on my days off.

I worry that our relationship isn't going to survive under present circumstances and have decided that it's time to either clip her wings and move in together or throw in the towel. It looks like I'll still be the one left holding it when the dust settles, however...because that taramosalata ain't gonna clean itself.