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The Ocean's Little Angel

© Joy Butler

Thick grasses grew tall out of the water near the shore and my daughter, grandsons, and I almost didn't see the little black and white bird as we strolled along the pier. My daughter pointed him out to me, a laughing gull, caught up in the grass stems and muddy water about fifteen feet below. He turned a tiny black bead of an eye up toward us as we leaned over the rail to get a better look. His left wing remained extended and broken feathers tangled with the grasses. Natural instincts warned him to fear mankind and he fluttered the mangled wing awkwardly in a futile attempt to move farther away from us.

We knew he must be hungry so we walked back to the car and retrieved what was left of our sandwich bread. It was all we had. I tossed bite-size pieces down to him and he gobbled down the ones I managed to land near him. Beachcombers ambled past us on the pier and smiled but no one stopped or offered to help. How long had the gull struggled in the water? How many people had seen him and passed him by?

There seemed no way to get to him. He was too far below the pier for us to reach, and was well off shore in the grassy water that was probably home to a few snakes with an attitude. The hot sun was sinking in the west and we needed to start back home but we just couldn't leave that little life in distress.

A long handled net would have helped immensely so we decided to ask around. We walked toward a camping area and approached a man sitting outside a small camper. He turned out to be a shrimper but all he had were the huge nets on his boat.

Finally my daughter remembered a swimming pool a short distance down the street that we had passed earlier. I doubted they would loan us their net but it couldn't hurt to ask. We drove back up there and I talked to the lifeguard who referred me to someone else in the concession stand. He was a very young boy but, after hearing about the bird, was willing to take the net and go with us back to the pier.

The gull was frightened of the net and struggled even harder to get away. As he flailed about, broken feathers tangled in the grass and twisted his wing awkwardly.

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