The force of the seagull was so great that I couldn't believe it was one of the gentle sea birds circling in the salty breeze above that had knocked the sandwich from my hands. He had taken advantage of the half second where I wasn't facing my sandwich to come flapping down as a bolt of lightning and viciously paddle the sandwich out of my hand with his webbed feet. He was accurate enough to not strike me with his claws, yet powerful enough to surprise me with his capacity for violence.

As the sandwich landed in the sand in front of me, the whole flock came roaring to the arena. What was once a sandwich was now the prized loot of the fallen Patroclus, and the seagulls had become the Trojans who battled furiously for the right of Achilles' armor. The war waged on over the scraps of the sandwich for longer than five seconds, but shorter than six. The sandwich, once the subject of my summertime afternoon and the source of both my enjoyment and nourishment, had been torn to pieces and devoured in a frenzy of no less than a dozen barbarous seagulls, each one devoted to his own gluttonous agenda, caring neither for his fellow fowl berserker nor his hapless human benefactor.