Birds of the Americas: Heermann’s Gull (Larus beermannii)
by Sean Lovelace
Call: Vocal when squabbling for food in groups; voice maintains a nasal/barking/mewing quality.
“They wake me up at dawn. They sound like hoozies being tortured through a microphone, a very large microphone. And that is probably the start of my complaints,” says Karen Tuttle, 68, a retired hair stylist who lives in East Los Angeles, right before rubbing her eyes from lack of sleep.
“Used to be when I did hair,” Karen continues, lighting a Newport Pleasure, then waving it, little wistful octopi of smoke, “only a few blondes looked like hoozies. Well now all the girls look like hoozies. Short, long, flat, frizzy, shaved, spiked, rainbow sherbet on a swizzle stick, I don’t know. Like nightclub dancers. Like prostitutes. Strippers or society girls. All look like harlots to me.”
Legs and Bill of Female: Bill is thin as a credit card, yield-sign yellow, with a tangerine spot near the tip. Legs are pinkish.
Legs and Bill of Male: Same as female.
Food: An opportunistic feeder, feasting on most anything floating on the ocean or just below its pearly surface or on the beach or around the block, over by the sewage pond or the tourist harbor or the surf shop or the estuary, weathered single-wide trailer slanting on a dune of wiry sea oats, once owned by Karen’s old flame, a man who mixed Pepto Bismol with vodka and told Karen he was a painter (watercolors) and would stay with her until death’s very door, when really he was a painter (houses) and left after four months, eight days with Karen’s antique jewelry box of clip-on earrings, her Costco economy box of Fritos, her coworker from the salon (an all-time hoozie named Debra), and her used beige Camry. Examples include fish, squid, shrimp, insects, clams (dropped from great heights), rodents, amphibians, baby birds (ripped from their nests), carrion, seeds, fruit, Doritos, Brown Pelican vomit or fish spilled from pouch, terrestrial arthropods, toothbrushes, condoms, food wrappers, cigarette butts, nurdles (a type of plastic granule used to make everything from grocery bags to prosthetic arms), drinking straws, water bottles, fishing net floats, sporks, roulette chips, birth control pill cases, mascara, souvenir golf balls, surgical masks, a baby rattle, and (fill in your own plastic item) _____________.
Migration: Complete, from California to Mexico. Often rests along the way in parking lots or roofs of gas stations.
Name: The simple fact is many birds are named after humans. Mostly white male humans. (Although there is a current movement among more progressive ornithologists to change all bird names to a more descriptive or behavioral foundation—the Red-winged Blackbird or Barn Owl, for example.) Heermann’s Gull is attributed to Adolphus Lewis Heermann, a 19th century naturalist who wore a fake beard, identified bird species in the same manner as John James Audubon (shooting as many as possible), and listed his occupation on shipping manifests as “gentleman.”
Factoid: The day the painter left, Karen (fill in your own verb) _____________ for a full hour in the dark shower. Then took up playing Ms. Pac-Man habitually, and then bingo at the local bowling alley.
Factoid: In our lifetimes, the oceans will be equal parts plastic and fish. We can expect three-quarters of ocean and marine-area species to disappear over the next century. We are the last who will see what we have seen.
Sean Lovelace lives in Indiana, where he chairs the English Department at Ball State University. He’s won awards and published in top literary magazines and wrote Fog Gorgeous Stag (Publishing Genius) and How Some People Like Their Eggs (Rose Metal) and other flash fiction collections. He blogs about nachos. He likes to run far.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Birds of the Americas: Heermann’s Gull (Larus beermannii)”? I generally admire birds. They may be actual containers of souls. I have seen everything from Eastern Bluebirds to Green Herons to Bald Eagles in my rural Indiana back lot. Last week I watched a Blue Heron hunt and snatch and shake and swallow a large unknown rodent (looked like a nutria but that’s unlikely). Hmm. Birds fascinate me, and generally seem too elegant and good and of themselves (though they do occasionally get lost) for this wretched and alienated planet. Anyway, this specific project came out of a noir novel (failed/in a drawer moldering…) I was writing set in L.A. I wanted to know what birds of L.A. to populate the novel so bought Birds of the Los Angeles Region. I am a huge fan of “appropriated form,” using forms in the metaverse for structural interests in literature. So I enjoyed the form of the book guide and saw its potential. I would like to write an entire guide, we shall see.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
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