Happy Tuesday! I had a few hours in between shifts a few months back and decided to go by the lake to eat lunch.  I sat at a picnic table and began to eat my sandwich when I noticed this young seagull slowly creeping toward me.  There was a small flock of them circling around the park and waiting for their chance to snag some food.  There are signs posted everywhere not to feed the birds since they are such nuisance but there was no way I wasn't going to share my food, especially with this sneaky little guy hopping inch by inch closer to me.  I ripped off a piece of the stale, soggy bread, I chose to buy a pre-made, processed, expired (I didn't check) convenience store sandwich and after tearing off the package and getting one good look at it made the decision to give it to the seagulls instead, and whistled to the sneaky bird.  Surprisingly, he stopped his half flying/hopping and looked right at me.  First I snapped this picture and then after setting my camera down I flipped the food as quickly as I could in his direction.  If you have ever fed a seagull before you know that as soon as that food hits the ground what may have been just two or three of them turns into 50 in a heart beat.  It was no different this time, the food fell a few feet away from Skippy and before he could even react a larger bird came swooping out of the air and gobbled it up in one bite, without even slowing down.  Skippy jumped backward and squawked angrily.  "Dang it Skippy!" I said aloud, "You need to be quicker!" I ripped off another piece and waited for Skippy to look at me again, as soon as we made eye contact I flipped the piece of sandwich at him again, this time I put a little more on the throw, hoping to get it closer to him.  It worked perfectly! The food fell right in front of him and before the 25 other birds that just appeared out of nowhere could swoop down and steal it Skippy scarfed it down.  He gave a little squawk of approval and hopped a few feet closer to me.  I guess he had figured getting food from me was worth the risk of getting so close to me and I was more than happy to oblige my new more courageous friend.  He got within a foot of me by the time I was done with lunch, way closer than any of the other gulls would get and it had paid off.  I had a good time bonding with Skippy and it reminded me of the seagull that used to sit on the roof next to my Grandparents house every day for years waiting to get fed by someone in my family.  He even had a name, Jonathon Seagull.  anyhow that's a different seagull story for a different day.  As I packed up and got ready to head back to work I said my good byes to Skippy and my heart nearly broke when he realized I was done feeding him.  He let out a half squawk and then slowly hopped away, turning back every once in a while just to make me feel worse.  That poor guy spends his entire life just trying to survive, every day is a battle to him.  It does break my heart when I know that many animals lose the battle for survival every day, especially when that cause is man made.  Every time I see a dead animal on the road I tear up because the poor thing was just trying to cross a road or grab a piece of food and then they are killed.  On my commute to and from work this summer I saw a lot of dead, squished seagulls on the side of the road and every time I did I would wonder if it was Skippy.  Did he get smashed by a vehicle while picking up some food from the road because I had let him get so close to me? I will never know if one of the carcasses was Skippy or not and honestly I really don't want to know, any dead animal is sad, it hurts a lot worse when that animal was a friend or just someone I connected with once...............................................PEACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!