Even before the lunch bell rings, the AHS campus is under siege. Seagulls perch on the gym rooftop, wedge into picnic bench crevices, and cast winged shadows over classrooms. Their presence alone warns students to seal up their sandwiches or risk angering the bird kingdom, which clearly expects its tribute of grilled cheese crusts.
Whenever a seagull takes off, at least one student flinches under the gym overhang. Friends have mapped out emergency evacuation routes. If seagulls could wear seatbelts, we could take them on lunchtime road trips until the bell. Unfortunately, they can’t, so some students are taking matters into their own hands. “Umbrellas are great for deflecting the egg yolks and whites that rain down from the sky,” said Rhea Mango (11).
It’s clever, but not everyone can haul umbrellas daily. For students who never touch their lockers, seagulls freely claim what they see as theirs. A seagull’s icy stare is enough to make a grown teenager surrender their salad, letting tomatoes and lettuce scatter on the concrete. Still, nobody can understand why seagulls enjoy eating off of concrete instead of off a picnic table. Not that students contemplate that. Most don’t even notice them coming.
Still, seagulls excel at forcing mindfulness. Nothing makes students pay attention to eating their lunch like a seagull’s looming presence above their heads. Ava Bird (9) recalls being traumatized when a gull ignored the 5-second rule, stole her grilled cheese as she was texting her best friend, and then fought with another gull over it.
Ava Bird (9) said, “I spent fifteen minutes standing in the lunch line to get that sandwich!” as a seagull stole it from her hands and munched on it beneath a picnic table (Art and Photo Credit: Jovina Zion Pradeep (12)).
Jay Claw (12), however, thinks their antics are hilarious. He said, “Watching seagulls is the best entertainment for standing in long lunch lines. All you have to do is watch someone drop a french fry in front of the gym, and the battle scene is even better than most movies. They’ll go from waddling to stomping on a Cheez-It in seconds. I couldn’t help but laugh as they squawked and fought over it. When you’ve lived in this city as long as I have, you learn to appreciate the chaos.” He insists gulls are protesting because they can’t go to grocery stores and demand equal lunch rights. It must be frustrating to demand equal rights only to be misidentified as a “seagull” when you’ve never even seen the ocean because you have lived in the Bay Area your whole life.
During this article’s writing, seagulls evaded photographs for a week. Vacation, perhaps? Phoebe Beak (10) said, “I believe that gulls are creatures sent as spies from outer space for a new robotic humanity, observing the young generation to plan their strategies for takeover.”
Whether the gull family vacations in the Bay, camps out on the track, or reports to space robots, one fact is clear: they have made AHS their lunchtime home. Beyond reminding students to look up, gulls now rule both our sandwiches and our imaginations by cracking eggs and cracking up even the most stoic students.
Eagle Era 
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