Name: Animal grudges.
Age: As old as the oldest disputed space on the planet.
Appearance: Like any animal attack, but this time it’s personal.
What form might such a grudge take? Imagine a pair of gulls pecking at your window from early morning until nightfall, every day.
Very irritating. Why would they do that? Because they hate you.
Is this a hypothetical example? No. That very thing is happening to two roommates from Newcastle – Georgina Gray, a nurse, and Helen McKeever, a dentist.
Are you suggesting the gulls bear some kind of grudge against the caring professions? “We don’t know what they want,” Gray told the Mail. “They just sit there all day. It’s like some sort of horror film.”
A very low-budget horror film. Still, it must be unnerving to have two angry birds take against you for personal reasons.
I very much doubt that is what is happening here. Can you think of a better explanation?
Yes. Well, I’d like to hear it.
The gull is pecking at its reflection in the glass, which it thinks is another bird invading its territory. That is why it starts as soon as the sun comes up. That is annoyingly plausible.
Birds don’t hold grudges. Crows do. In 2011, researchers in Seattle found that a crow population they had been capturing and tagging would recognise and harass their former captors, even a year after last seeing them.
They would probably harass anyone after that. To test the theory, the scientists started wearing Dick Cheney masks while they were out capturing.
And the crows learned to hate Cheney? As did we all.
Any more examples? In 1997, a poacher called Vladimir Markov shot and wounded a Siberian tiger. The animal followed Markov’s scent back to his remote cabin, where it lay in wait, killing Markov when he returned.
There is a lesson here: if you wound a tiger, don’t go home. Also: don’t poach. Anyway, other creatures are capable of revenge. Truman, an octopus at the New England aquarium in Boston, took to shooting jets of water at a female volunteer he didn’t like. The volunteer quit, but when she returned to visit months later, Truman squirted her again.
I think Truman had a crush on her. Camels and elephants are also said to hold long-term grudges. One Indian man who left his camel tied up in the heat all day had his head severed from his neck by the animal.
There’s a lesson there, too: if you’re going to mistreat a camel, wear your Cheney mask. Something like that.
Do say: “Be kind to animals or they’ll get you.”
Don’t say: “I banged on my dentist’s window for almost a year – until she got a restraining order.”
