Surely all of us can think of a time – or seven – where life has, for a lack of a better term, crapped on you.
It could be a work situation where you feel like your boss doesn’t support you enough or extends your workload. It could be at home, where the hectic schedules of your family members make it feel like you can’t get ahead or relax. Or you could be a hockey coach having to deal with hockey parents after rep team tryouts…
Or it could be a situation like I had on Sunday afternoon, where life literally craps on you.
After spending a week on vacation with the family in Port Elgin, sitting on the beach and catching as many rays as on can, we returned home and found ourselves with an empty fridge.
The boys were not keen on leaving the house after returning home, so my wife and I decided to head to the local grocery store with our daughter to grab the needed provisions.
After a stop at the big blue box store, we hopped back in the vehicle for the short drive to what my kids, in their younger days, called the “orange” store to grab more groceries.
Our daughter, who was acting somewhat like a sloth, was slow to get out of the car. My wife, in an effort to increase shopping efficiency, decided to go inside and get a head start.
“We’ll meet you in there,” I said.
After a few minutes of waiting – rather, negotiating – our daughter decided to increase her speed from sloth to tortoise as she got herself unbuckled from her seat in the car.
It was at that moment that life changed.
Out of nowhere, I could hear small thuds – similar to hail or heavy rain – hitting nearby cars. Thinking it was starting to rain, I suggested to my daughter that she take her time getting out of the car.
Then something hit my shoulder with a decent amount of velocity.
At first, I thought some troublemaking youths were throwing stones or something in the parking lot. Then I looked at my left shoulder.
It was not a stone.
It was not rain.
It was bird poop.
I looked away, and looked again.
Yup, the bird poop was still there.
“Are you kidding me?”
I looked up to see a flock of seagulls – not the 1980s English new wave band, but rather a group of nature’s flying garburators – overhead.
They left a trail of carnage in their path, dropping proverbial bombs on the surrounding cars – and my left shoulder.
In case there was any doubt, this is a true story. (Mike Wilson photo)
My daughter looked at me.
“What’s that on your shirt?”
“It’s bird poop.”
“What?”
“A bird just pooped on me.”
It was the funniest thing that she had ever heard.
After finding some tissues in the car to clean up the mess as best as I could, our daughter decided it was time to get a move on. She increased her speed from tortoise to hare, and while laughing decided we needed to get into the store to find Mom.
We got inside the store and in short order found my wife.
Or rather, my wife found us because our daughter was laughing hysterically as she made her way through the store.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Daddy got pooped on!”
My wife looked up.
“What?”
“Daddy got pooped on by a bird,” said our daughter between giggles.
My wife looked at my shoulder, where the big stain remained despite my best efforts to clean it up.
“Is that… is that bird poop?” she asked.
“Yes. A seagull pooped on me in the parking lot.”
Then she started laughing.
After a few moments, she was able to compose herself.
“They say getting pooped on by a bird is a sign of good luck,” she told me.
I don’t know who “they” are, but they never got pooped on by a bird, evidently.
Two days later, as I write this, I am able to find the humour in it now. However, at the time, walking around a busy grocery store with seagull scat on my shoulder while people gave you funny looks was not humourous to me.
I am 99.9 per cent sure this was just, as they say, pure luck that I got shot with scat. However, there is that 0.1 per cent chance that the seagulls were seeking revenge for not leaving enough food on the beach last week, or perhaps for the unkind headline I ran in the Walkerton Herald-Times a few weeks back – “Seagull scat has Lake Rosalind, Marl Lake residents concerned.”
With that said, the incident provided me with fodder for this week’s column when I needed a topic. I guess it was a stroke of luck, after all.
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Mike Wilson is the editor of Midwestern Newspapers. While the above story may sound far-fetched, he has the photographic evidence to prove that he was the victim of a flyby faeces fiasco. Comments and feedback are welcome at mwilson@midwesternnewspapers.com.
