How to eat a Hamburger in Circular Quay

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Escaping from Circular Quay - home of the swooping
seagulls - on a ferry.

There’s a trick to eating a burger at Circular Quay. First of all you have to remember to hold the burger close to your body, right in front of your heart like some sort of makeshift shield. You should try to avoid walking and eating simultaneously and you should avoid open spaces. In fact, if possible, it’s best to position yourself so that you eat with your back to a wall.

“What is the reason for such surreptitious guardianship of your burger at Circular Quay?” you might ask.

Seagulls.

I once bought a burger from the McDonalds at Circular Quay, I can’t remember if it was a Big Mac or just a Cheeseburger, in fact I think it might have been some one-off type of burger, “Bacon and Cheese burger” or something, I remember I bought two because there was a special deal on. Anyway, as I was walking back to the ferry wharf to catch my ferry home - swoop!

My burger was plucked clean out of my hands and hit the floor in front of me where it was immediately set upon by flock of seagulls. I use the collective noun “flock” but in reality “swarm” would be more appropriate. I moved to kick the horrible birds who’d stolen my lunch and they scattered away, but there was not a trace of the burger. It had dematerialised before my eyes in a frenzy of pecking and flapping.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Nowhere is safe from the damned seagulls - if you're
eating, at least one of them will find you!

Just as well I’d bought two burgers.

I suppose what happened next is predictable for you, dear reader, but unfortunately it wasn’t for me. Having walked further along to my ferry wharf, I took a look over each shoulder to make sure that there weren’t any more of those wretched seagulls and unwrapped my second burger. Then, just as I lifted the burger to my mouth to take a bite.

Swoop!

Seemingly from nowhere and in one clean and continuous motion the seagull flew right over my left shoulder and plucked the burger from my hand just as after I’d taken my first bite. This time I managed to hold on to my burger, but it was a bitter consolation. I wasn’t going to eat a burger that had been in a seagull’s mouth, or beak rather. A whole flock of birds had materialised around me, expecting the food to be on the floor. Well, making straight for the bin, I protected my pecked-at burger from the swooping seagulls long enough to deliver it into the hands of the Sydney City Municipal Rubbish Collection, if I wasn’t going to eat it no-one was!

Image via Tom Häkkinen
I got some relief from that particular seagull pestering me
when her adolescent chick came to pester her for food.

It was only upon later reflection that I realised that there was some canniness behind the swoop mechanics employed by those seagulls. On both occasions the bird flew right over my left shoulder (I’m right-handed) and plucked the burger from my grip just after I’d taken my first bite. Those damned seagulls must’ve been watching from the air and recognising a human burger-eating motion quickly swept into action.


Damned seagulls.