The plan for our last day was pretty clear: Catch boat to Alcatraz at 4:30, be back at the city at 6:00, drive out by 6:30, catch dinner on the way, grocery shop from 8:00 to 8:15, and arrive in Yosemite at 9:30. Easy peasy, right!
After we visited Alcatraz (which was awesome), we were strolling down the street when the children decided to totally jettison my schedule. It didn't help that everybody was all "our feet hurt" and "we're hungry" and "why haven't you let us pee for three days" and whatnot.
So they start with the "we want to eat" bit. Sigh. So we stopped at one of the many roadside carts that sells food, because nothing says "quality food" like a guy selling fried stuff on the side of the road. Our choices were:
Me: Sourdough chili bowl
Angela: Nachos
Victoria: Nachos
William: Big Hot Dog, slathered with Ketchup (or Catsup, if you prefer)
Being the most awesomest dad ever, I sent the family around the corner to a bench while I paid. Which is why I missed...the attack!
William had eaten about half of his hot dog (this estimate is controversial - he says he ate just one bite, while Angela estimates it was half; I go with Angela's estimate because this is the boy who often says he had to wait thirty million seconds for something), and was holding up his dog to take another bite, when a shadow fell over the entire group. As they began to look up, horrified, while time slowed and onlookers began diving for cover.
The thing, which I scarce can call a Seagull, for such expresses adequately neither its girth nor malice, dove with all force into the boy, battering him aside and seizing his hot dog and nearly his fingers with it. Cackling with malice, it then tore off into the sky, knocking over an old woman and battering aside a tour buss with the gale from its wings.
Angela, ever courageous, gave chase in an effort to deliver some sort of retribution to the horrid gull (this, actually, was an error, for if he'd had an accomplice she would have lost her food as well, but this gull was so evil that none of his ilk would work with him). Alas, all she could hit the gull with were curses.
The boy, understandably, was devastated. I, understandably, was devastated too: that hot dog cost $23, and to buy him another one would cost similarly (okay, I may overstate San Francisco food prices, but not by much).
I bought him another hot dog, and after much sorrow we finished our meal. Then, as we began our long, sad, stroll back to the cable cars, we found our first piece of evidence:
Guuuuuulll!
Aha! The gull had passed this way, for only William's hot dog would have had such a ketchup-soaked rag around it! For some reason, the finding of this wrapper made everyone happy, though I didn't quite know why: if it had eaten the wrapper, perhaps it would have choked, saving a small child from the fate of losing a finger. Plus, we might could have stomped on its body (from a safe distance, of course, in case we dislodged the paper and it sprang up and attacked us).We were further up the road, debating the size of the thing, when William espied one waddling in the gutter and said "it was that big!"
"No," said Victoria. "It wasn't that big."
"Wait a minute," Angela said. "Is that ketchup on its beak?"
"I think it's pronounced catsup," I said.
"It is ketchup!" William said. "That's the gull!"
Once again, the chase was on! I, being fleetest of foot, quickly outpaced the others. Angela once again could only hit it with curses. But I did better: I got a picture:
If you zoom in on his vile beak, you see the telltale catsup:
And then I spit on it. Because no gull steals from my boy and gets away!
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