We were waiting at a bus stop in Eastbourne, there were a few young herring gulls about, as they do wandering across the road, this is a bus and taxi only area.One particular young gull was happily exploring while his mother tried to get him off the road.a few bus drivers waited as he moved out of the way, but then one bus driver came round the corner, slowed a little he looked at the bird, waited a bit and I actually saw him shrug his shoulders and then drove forward, completely popping the bird into a mush on the road, and then proceeded to pull into the bus stop and get his news paper out.I was enraged and went over to his window and knocked on there saying I saw you blatantly run over that young seagull...now his response I can't type on a public forum, basically included f, c and w words abusive to me, its only a f'in seagull, told me to f off or would do the same to me if I didn't, f off...I haven't been able to remove this scene from my mind since it happened, I feel I should have rushed over and saved the gull...what should I have done ?
Hi CCC .. The same thing happened to me this morning while I was out with a friend . A van driver drove over a young gull but dident kill it out right but badly mangled the right wing.
I ran up to the van at the lights he basicly said the same thing But dident expect me to open his door and drag him out. I still have a bit of a sore hand . But dont think he will ever run over another bird in the road . I cant abide folk like that .
We took the gull to the PDSA which was just round the corner and the vet said there was nothing he could do for it. Which I knew but just wanted to make sure.
It takes nothing to stop and move the bird off the road OK it may have wandered back on again but thats beside the point.
There is no excuse for what he did (Mind you I maybe I could have handled it a tad better but I was real angry andnobody swears at me without me doing something about it)
Cheers
AL
If its no fun Yer no doin it right!
Blimey, well done, probably a bit risky to drag the guy out of the van, I would have probably ended up flattened myself if I tried that.
shame the bird couldn't have been saved.
What is it with drivers, slow down, calm down and if it takes a minute longer to get home, then so be it....
Hi CaptainCalamityClam
I was shocked and outraged when I read your post. How could anyone behave in that way? It isn't acceptable and LRB has given you the best advice. I would certainly do what he suggests.
Best wishes Chris
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Hi AL
I can just see you now dragging the driver out of his van.
Maybe you shouldn't have risked injury yourself :-)
What a shame that the poor bird didn't survive after all. :-(
Unknown said: I ran up to the van at the lights he basicly said the same thing But dident expect me to open his door and drag him out.
I ran up to the van at the lights he basicly said the same thing But dident expect me to open his door and drag him out.
Good Man Al
If I was in charge you'd now be in receipt of some kind of civic award and the van driver would be scraping accumulated fat and other materials off sewer linings with his bare hands.
JBNTS
Every day a little more irate about bird of prey persecution, and I have a cat - Got a problem with that?
Hi CCC and welcome to the forum.
Sorry it was in such dreadful circumstances. I couldn't agree more with everything that's been said above and hope you manage to get some sort of justice for the poor gull (and its mother).
A similar thing happened to my daughter and her children in our town last year. It wasn't a gull but a rabbit. The poor thing had frozen in the headlights, as they do. The car stopped and the rabbit ran off down the road away from the car, zigzagging from one side to the other, but the car followed at great speed, weaving about from one side of the road to the other until it caught the rabbit and ran it over. This was clearly a case of a driver deliberately chasing a wild animal. My grandchildren were horrified. My daughter ran after the car but wasn't fast enough to get the registration.
Hope you are OK Al after your little incident. You were brave - you never know these days whether these people have knives.
Cheers, Linda.
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Geez! How horrific to hear of all these appalling stories! There really are some head cases out there (and I agree with Sparrow Al - take care - you never know.... if they can run over a defenceless creature on purpose.... who know what they're capable of!)
Hope that you manage to get a positive response from the bus company regarding this CCC! And welcome to the forum from me too! :-)
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Outrageous behaviour and definitely you should have reported it immediately
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rhodopsin said: Outrageous behaviour and definitely you should have reported it immediately
Thinking about you still can. The bus companies will know who was driving the buses through the station/terminous when you were there.
Hi,
the safest option with the bus driver was probably to have taken a photo of the bus with your cell phone and reported it to the bus company fleet manager :)
I was out birding, riding my bike when I was a hairy teen and I was driven off the road by a large car- I sat up, pulled out my bins and read his number at about 200 yards- he came back very fast to apologise-
S
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