About the Necessity of Pedicure

If you're a seagull and you read this, just cast an eye at your feet and ask yourself: "Are my claws too long?" A wild seagull's claws are never long. During take-offs, landings and running on rocks (or other kinds of rough materials) they're being blunted and kept short. We domesticated gulls can afford being lazy, whereas in wildlife you fight for survival all the time, so claws cannot grow long.

Too long claws are no good:

1. You stumble if they hook one another.
2. You might eventually hurt your eyes while scratching your head (don't know -- just my personal concern).
3. Too long claws tend to turn outside, while you're standing on your feet. Any orthopedist will tell you, this isn't healthy for your bones.

My feet at November 21: Long claws tend to turn outside!

Seagulls don't use their claws to cling, like those birds who sit on trees. Gulls cannot cling -- we just stand, like dogs, ducks and humans. If you see a gull on a lantern, or something: that individual is just standing up there. Long gull-claws are useless, annoying and potentially dangerous! So you gotta keep 'em short.

November 27: This is way too long--were're the pincers?!

A wild gull's feet in stony environment: Claws don't grow so very long there.

This is how to cut the claws of a seagull:

Humans use various kinds of pincers, to shorten their claws. So you take something like that. Mind that your claws might turn around while the pincers' jaws close forcefully! So you close them softly, let the claw find its most stable position between the jaws.... and then you press. You better let your human do it, for this isn't easily done with a beak....

Personally I have my claws blunted with a little file after that -- I don't wanna hurt myself with sharp edges, that's why we do it. Humans have lots of vanity, fooling around with those ridiculous nail files. Well, it can't harm if you're a bit neat too....

Now they're cut off. It isn't really fun, but it had to be.

Now let's discuss how to improve the skin condition of your feet. Even humans love to walk in the mud, because it's good for their feet. We gulls do it a lot in the wild, but if we have to live in houses as disabled gulls, it's hardly possible. In this case you might wanna try human hand cream, if the skin of your webbed feet gets too dry.

As you see here, my feet tend to be a little dry at times.

Of course you choose a cream without perfume and other unnecessary chemical stuff. There are special creams for humans with delicate hands on the market, so you better use those. Try it once and see, whether an allergic reaction will occur: if this is the case you try out another cream. Hand cream should be rubbed in by your human pet -- you can actually train your human to rub in the cream. Finally it (the human) should add a bit more cream on top of your feet (while you're standing upright), just this time don't have it rubbed in.

Now you're done and your feet look neat.

This looks very much better. The feet look a little reddish,

since the massage encouraged the blood circulation, but that's okay.

Claws have regular length now: I'm not an eagle--just a normal herring gull.

Our YouTube films on this issue:

The next morning, after having changed the bird sand:

Who's Interfering With Whose Nature?

My stepsister Liza had been entirely different from me: big, healthy, strong and independent. I've never seen her, but ma says, Liza was like, "Okay, drop the food there and beat it." Often she walked from the kitchen to the bathroom and hoped into the shower basin, to take a bath. Then she went back to the kitchen, hoped on a chair, then on the table, to finally occupy her window board again. My mother sometimes met her in the corridor, like accidentally bumping into a brief neighbor. That pretty much was it in an oyster shell.*

One day Liza flew for a spin in the kitchen, so ma decided it was time to practice flying in the yard. Her idea was to also feed the herring gull there, so Liza would learn where to find support in future. However, this plan to release her slowly into wildlife, utterly failed. Liza stepped out on the windowsill, spread her wings and flew away over the roofs, leaving her human nurse in a state of shock: "Aaaah, my baby's gonna starve!"

Me, in the miserable condition how I was foisted on my adopter

In the nearby harbor people interfered in the nature of the town's history, demolishing old sheds from the 19th century -- to build something more profitable. Ma was politically very much against it. However, this was exactly the area where a friend and his girlfriend found me. He was a skilled zookeeper and must have known what to do. They say they had watched me quite some time and I obviously had no parents. Had my natural parents been breeding on one of those sheds?

Whatever, after something must have interfered in the nature of my family life, and actually destroyed my natural herring gull nursery, those friends downright interfered with natural death. I already looked like a feathered skeleton -- almost starved and fatally sick. And this was right on clue to interfere in the nature of my ma's motherly worries: "Hey, we found your Liza!" It took my mother several days to realize, "No, this cannot be Liza!" Got it? They downright tricked her, to have her nursing me. They interfered in her human nature, by foisting her on another herring gull baby! That day nobody knew, she would end up being my mother for lifetime, due to the fact I would never learn to fly. My injury healed, but my right wing always remained stiff.

Me, interfering with my mom's backpack, attacking virtual sandworm

So in a way I am interfering in the nature of the one female homo sapiens sapiens who adopted me. Today it is big love. Although, it isn't my fault, but I really interfere with human species.

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* Ma met Liza in the rush hour of a main shopping street. There really was no worse place in the city. Liza couldn't decide whether to be trampled down by the rushing human feet on the sidewalk, or killed in the heavy traffic. Liza was uninterruptedly fleeing from the street to the sidewalk and from the sidewalk to the street &ct/&ct.... -- my mother says it was an impossible situation, so she finally took Liza home. About two weeks later Liza began to fly. Somewhere up on a roof above the terrible traffic-hell she probably must have been relatively safe. But maybe the housekeeper didn't want her nursery to be placed there? Today my mother says, Liza was so strong, she probably got by. Let's assume she did. She might be one of those bold gulls on YouTube, that knock at peoples windows, to be fed -- interfering with their human nature again and again. Isn't nature full of wonderful irony?