A seagull based at a tourist hotspot on England's Norfolk coast has pledged to stop hassling tourists and local residents for snacks and treats in a bid to be ‘beach body ready’ for the summer.
“You never know when a nice dead fish is going to wash up on the beach, so you don’t want to ruin your appetite on old, soggy chips ahead of that,” explained the gull to a local media outlet.
“And besides that, I’m trying to look after myself a little better overall. I saw a human reading a book called ‘you are what you eat’ and that phrase really stuck with me. If I am what I eat, then I'm a flying garbage bin or the grimy footwell in the back seat of a family sedan - just in bird form”.
As part of this new healthy lifestyle, the bird will also exercise by flying around more often, instead of perching on a wall screeching all day. The seagull acknowledged that this was all quite a change from the bleak lockdown days when he was the ringleader of the flock calling for emergency chips to be delivered to seaside resorts across the country amid dwindling footfall.
But those days are happily long gone and the seagull feels he's getting rather out of shape due to the surfeit of sloppy tourists dropping food on the ground - or leaving their chips momentarily unattended on a pub table.
“No more loitering around looking for sandwiches to steal, no more circling around menacingly waiting for a child to drop a bag of crisps. I’m going to get up, fly out to the horizon and back. After that, pilates”.
OGN will keep you posted on how the gull's diet and fitness regime progresses.