Mine!
It amuses me the animators gave this very human characteristic to name it and claim it to these gulls. I see a similar scenario playing outside my kitchen window all the time. I have a hummingbird feeder that I fill with simple syrup that I make myself (I call it methctar because my little hummers are addicts. When I place a new batch out and it’s late afternoon, there can be as many as a dozen little zoomers vying for a place at the table. My son Josh says it’s like a pub full of regulars). They are ravenous little creatures. I have to make a new batch everyday.
Lately there’s been a ruby-throated male who has gone all “Mine!” with the feeder. He will perch on top of it like he’s a pirate guarding stolen treasure. He’ll chase away any other hummer with aerial warfare that is impressive to watch if it wasn’t so audacious.
He guards it like he owns it. And yet if you could ask the little feller where this motherlode of methctar comes from and how is it that it magically refills every day, he’d probably turn to you in all his scarlet-necked plumage and say, “I don’t care about that. It’s mine. Off you go!”
How funny it is that he can look at the bounty he sits on and think he somehow makes it happen just by claiming ownership. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, dontcha think??
