Seagulls and pigeons are considered pests in Dublin. These birds have adapted to city life, easily picking up scraps of fast food and eating out of open dumpsters (skips).
Dublin is not a clean city. Being an American from the Midwest, where cities of a certain size are clean (not thinking of Chicago but St. Louis, for example), I am troubled by the waste of food I see on the ground.
Seagulls and pigeons make odd noises and chatter all night. I suppose pigeons sleep, but seagulls seem to require little sleep, making their calls until past one and starting at four. Maybe they take naps.
Most of the Dubliners ignore these birds, but I am taken by their persistence and presence. Bird watching is my hobby and I used to keep a bird diary-one that was for 35 years consistently followed in three countries. But, now, in the past 7 years or so, I just observe.
People call these birds "pests" but they are pests only because of our lifestyle. In the old days, when the fishing boats came to land and the fishermen, as I saw at Bristol many years ago, cut the heads and tails off the fish quayside, the seagulls, as well as the cats, helped to clean up by taking those bits away.
Our own bad habits and the nasty side of wastefulness have created these pests.
I think Catholics have become the seagulls and pigeons of modern Dublin and modern Europe. We shall more and more, as society leaves Nature and natural law philosophy behind, become the pests of the West. We shall be seen, and already are in some places, as nuisances to be either ignored, marginalized, or as, sadly, in some places when poison is laid out for pigeons, killed.
We are quickly losing our place in the public sphere. I have had many discussions in the past week with young people who have no idea that there is a natural law and many who do not believe in it as a reality. They see no difference between humans and other animals, denying the soul and denying our goal-eternal life. I am not "one of them" in their eyes, but a pest.
Do not pretend that Catholicism and gross sinfulness accepted by a society can live in close proximity without clashes. Do not pretend we are not in our permanent home. Like the seagulls and pigeons which have their place, but have had to adapt to encroachments on their space, we shall lose spaces to be and to go. We can adapt for awhile, but we can never compromise.
Sometimes Seagulls attack and eat pigeons. We must not attack each other out of frustration or spite or in turf warfare.