A FEATHERY FEAST

Last week my friend’s retriever ate a seagull. A whole, white, unblemished, fresh-from-the-sky seagull.
When I agreed to walk Max, I asked if he had any particular quirks I should know about. Like my dog, for example, who is utterly sweet natured and adorable unless you’re a Jack Russell on a lead, in which case he’ll eat you.
‘Oh yes,’ said my friend Rachel. ‘He retrieves things.’
Bearing in mind that Max is a retriever, the discovery that he was a bit of a beachcomber didn’t worry me. Even when she added that he guards his trophies jealously.
‘You’ll never get anything off Max,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. He hardly ever seems to suffer any ill effects,’ she added somewhat cryptically.
When I was growing up a friend of mine had a retriever, a really soppy old thing who used to collect fresh eggs from the hen coop at the end of her garden and bring them to the kitchen. He would hang on to them gently until someone held out a hand and only then would he release his precious cargo, undamaged.
So when, at crack of dawn this morning, Max shot across the sand to the water’s edge and pounced on something, I barely noticed. I hardly batted an eyelid when he came right up to me, proudly bearing the very large bird.
I remained happily ignorant until we’d walked about halfway around the point. Max barked and scarpered if anyone approached him, but the bird was still clearly untouched.
Then all of a sudden, he vanished. I called but there was no sign of Max. I wandered on, confident he’d catch me up when he felt like it, but he didn’t.
Eventually, retracing my steps, I spotted him hiding in the sand dunes. He appeared to be shredding something. I hollered and he came lolloping towards me, stopping every now and then to shred a bit more. By the time he reached me, a large proportion of the beautiful, unblemished seagull was, how can I put it? Blemished. I’ll spare you the details but it wasn’t pretty.
Somehow I knew that offering him one of the peanut-sized treats I had in my pocket wasn’t going to distract him. I cajoled, I did my authoritative voice, I chased after him flapping my arms (not sure why), and I stood stock still, pointing sternly at the sand and saying, ‘Leave it!’ in a voice an octave lower than my usual one, which I’m told makes people more likely to listen to you. Margaret Thatcher did it apparently.
None of it worked. I turned my back on him and strode off, hoping that withdrawing my affection might make him realise the error of his ways, ditch the shredded bird and charge after me. (What? It works with men). Instead he stuck close to my heels, bearing the increasingly gory remains of seagull proudly for everyone to see. By this time I realised that the seagull had had its chips anyway and I gave up fighting and concentrated on pretending he wasn't with me.
By the time I got back to the car park, there was no longer any sign that the seagull had ever existed. No beak, no feet, nothing.
For a week I picked up doggy-doo with feathers in it. Seriously. Perfectly formed and healthy looking, if you must know, but stuffed full of feathers.
And Rachel was right. Max suffered no ill-effects whatsoever.