sweasel.com

Maybe it’s just fun, like dropping rocks into water from a bridge. They,re pretty smart, and smart animals do seem to have a penchant for mischief.

Seagulls drop shellfish to crack them open, so maybe dropping stuff is just instinctive. I’ve heard they drop rocks, probably thinking they might be shellfish, so perhaps they just drop anything that is approximately the right size to be a clam or scallop or whelk or snail. I suppose a bug or two could be jarred loose when they drop moss, so it could be learned behavior as well.

zOMG!1! Those aren’t gulls – those are the three-dimensional intersections of four-dimensional hyperintelligent Meta-Galactic Banditos! They got marooned here when their flying soup tureen’s battery died and they found that they’d forgotten to put 4D jumper cables in the boot/trunk.

Dropping clams, rocks, moss clumps, etc., is their way of determining the density and viscosity of our atmosphere as temperature, relative humidity, and altitude vary so they can build a craft using terrestrial materials that will get them high enough that they can get a jump start. They’re worried about getting the Reynolds Number correct so they won’t be at the mercy of wind turbulence while they try to get some lift from sheep flatulence, methane being lighter than air.

Can I have some more wine, please?

Because moss tastes better than fish guts?
Because assholes don’t hid firecrackers in moss to try and blow gulls up?
Maybe they wuz hired by the Ministry of Housinge (spelt that way on the side of the van) to remove the moss?
Maybe they’re trying to get a gig with Mick Jagger and the boys(you do the math).

Maybe they just want to remove the moss so they can use the rooves for toilets without tickling their arses.

“In the heated idleness of youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were inclined to ask, “Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?” But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

I am often confused by calendars and dates and other time markers, but oughtn’t this be a dead pool post?

@AliceH – I may be confused, too, but I think the current Dead Pool opened a week ago on April 20.

How are the mugwort dreams working out?

Meh. Not so you’d notice. And smoking stuff leaves a nasty taste in my mouth afterwards.

I wrangled some sleepy mix out of our tame herbalist that has an ingredient that’s supposed to enhance dreams. Uncle B will remember what it’s called. I can’t say that’s spectacularly effective either.

Does help me sleep, though.

AliceH: did I miss a death?

I’m the one confused. When I clicked the dead pool link on the right, it brings up #107 with a February date. However, when I scroll down through the posts I do see the current one (also #107) dated 4/20. That’s the one I missed, or just forgot – the post-Barbara Bush one.

Can’t tell whether age or insomnia is screwing with my memory more. I’m certain it’s not the whiskey.

Oh, hell — did I screw up the numbers again?

Hey, guess what — I had the ‘algebra test’ dream last night! First time in a thousand years.

Yes, my math. It is not good.

Oh heavens—dreaming about an algebra test! That’s not a dream, that’s a nightmare! But I remember dreaming in “French,” where I laboriously tried to translate my English thoughts into French for my teacher. I also had typing dreams—which were awful—but not as traumatic as the French dreams.

Gulls? They’re beyond me. When I lived in Denver, 1500 miles from any ocean, they used to cluster in big gangs all over empty parking lots. I still see them here, but the Gulf is not far away; it’s understandable. But what is the attraction big parking lots have for gulls? The trash that humans leave behind? The fact the lots are flat and wide-open (except when humans are driving all across them, that is), rather like the sea when it’s calm?

“The fact the lots are flat and wide-open ”
ah, good thought, I hadn’t considered the calm sea parallel.
Except for the lurker beneath the waves doesn’t lurk under the tar and (ba-dum, baaaaa-dum, baaaaaaa-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum….)
sends his tentacles bursting forth into the sunlight dragging down hundreds of placidly floating guls and….. Cthulhu!

Sorry, wrong comment thread. But I think you’re on to something with the sealike setting.

I’m playing with the theory it’s partially completed behavioral evolution. Most all Gulls use moss in nests, but they’ve evolved in lots of ways in where and how they build them as they adjust to human habitation and encroachment. So, the moss-gathering instinct is still extant, but what to do with said-moss is gone. I imagine them flying about thinking “Yay! Imma get me summa dat!” Then as they fly off with a beak-full, they think, “WTF do I do with this now? Ptui!!”

They’re throwing tantrums because they aren’t Robins.

Bugs underneath, surely?