The following is told from the point of view of one of those annoying seagulls that hover around campus:

Hey it’s me again.

Yeah you know who. That annoying son-of-a-gun who becomes your personal Osama bin Laden during lunch everyday. Your own FBI’s Most Wanted… except for the fact that I’m in plain sight.

Well me and my crew just wanted to let you know that you and us should get along more. It’s not fun when we swing by your central patch of grass and all you do is run away and cover your heads as if you’re anticipating the Blitzkrieg.

Look, I know we have our differences and I’m sorry about Billy… you know, the one that always has to do his business right when we come see you guys. It’s just he gets nervous around teenagers and his, um, excretory system gets nervous, too. Don’t worry: he’s seeing a therapist, trying to get his issues sorted out and hopefully that issue will resolve itself soon.

But forget about Billy. We’re really just like you humans and just want to be friends. How are we alike, you may ask? Well for starters, we both like food.

Food brings humans together, it brings seagulls together and it should be able to bring humans and seagulls together. Don’t you see us eating your food when you run away? We’re trying to show you that we too love a good food wrapper or empty milk carton for a midday snack.

Also, us avians also try to impress our friends. You know those cool flying formations? We never used to do that, but then one day some genius said, “Hey guys, I think humans will like us more if they see we fly in sick V-shaped arrangements. I’ve seen their war planes do that, so maybe it’s like a human thing; we should try it out.”

Parties. Us seagulls love parties. We have one every day around your lunchtime — as you’ve probably seen — and we try to reenact human parties. We walk around all clumsily and fly into people we know, but all that ends up happening is they give us a weird look of annoyance. You know that feeling, right?

Seagulls are shy, too, just like humans. You might notice that every time you walk towards us, we repel away from you. Why is this? Well, for many reasons. First of all, humans smell worse than bird poop. You know that kid in your class that smells so bad, but you don’t tell them? In this case, humans are that god-awful smelling student. But more simplistically, we’re just shy creatures and we don’t like meeting new people, kind of like those itty bitty freshmen on the first day of school.

Most importantly though, we’re just like humans because we also like to gossip. You think Billy gets it easy? HA! All of us give him crap for, well, his crap. It’s only human — I mean animalistic? — to ostracize those we don’t like. So don’t worry, we’re prejudiced too.

Ok, so now I feel like I’ve told you enough about me and my species for you to feel comfortable around us. I know it’ll take some time, but you have to start somewhere, right?

Oh and I’m sure you’re wondering right now, “Seagulls have thoughts and feelings?” Well we do. Keep an open mind; you’re not the only intelligent life form out there and you don’t even have to get into big fancy metal ships and blast off into the sky to find them. Because sometimes things are, like I said before, in plain sight. Take a second and choose to look at them sometimes.