A shoplifting seagull has been banned from a convenience store in Wyke Regis, Dorset.
The brazen bird allegedly nicked 30 bags of crisps during a two-month crime spree, boldly blagging them from a shelf adjacent to the store’s entrance. Posters now advise customers to shut the door behind them, although moving the crisps closer to the till and siting a large and starving feral cat in their place could also work.
Store manager Stuart Harmer had tried switching the feathered fiend’s favourite BBQ flavour with something a tad more piquant, but the gull wasn’t deterred. Let’s face it, if you’re happy pecking at a dead rat’s innards or a drunk’s vomit, your guts can surely handle a bag of Spicy Nik Naks.
The news came as no surprise to Under The Counter. He recalled a store in Bangor, Wales being similarly afflicted in 2022. And he was far from confounded to find that the Wyke Regis seagull was called “Steven” – as in Steven Seagal, geddit? – because that’s what the bird from Bangor had also been dubbed.
Could it be the same avian pest? According to research published in one of the Auld Boy’s favourite reads, the journal Frontiers of Marine Science, seagulls will travel 100 miles to visit their favourite chip shops. So perhaps.
Unfortunately, UTC’s own research ground to a halt calculating how far it is from Bangor to Wyke Regis. Google Maps revealed a distance of 200 miles.
But, as the Auld Boy wailed in anguish, “That’s as the crow flies, it doesn’t say a thing about seagulls.”
