The black seagull

 A seagull coated with oil tries to take off. It shakes its wings, with great difficulty. It throws two or three drops of dark mud onto two other seagulls. They are more or less white. They were passing by...
 “Oh! That’s disgusting! You, dirty thing, watch what you’re doing!” 
 “I am sorry” answers the black seagull sheepishly.  
 The white ones move away. They hold their heads high. They do not look at their feet. They never look at their feet, never ever. As they say, seagulls have no f... When they fly, spreading their white wings in the blue sky, they are so proud!  And when they land... Everybody gets by. Seagulls do not speak about that sort of things, that’s so embarrassing!
 But look... One of them stumbles over something. It gets hurt....”Ouch!”
 It does not look at its feet. It looks around... “Your fault Dirty!” It throws an oyster at the black seagull. “Ouch!” That does hurt too...
 From within the oyster, a little shy voice asks: “May I open now?”
 “Oh yes!” answer the hungry black seagull at the oyster’s ear, imitating the voice of the sea...
 It thrusts its beak into the opening oyster and “gulp!” swallows it in one.
 “Berk!” the white seagulls shout. “That’s so disgusting! Are we going to bear this awful display of dirty manners for long yet? Let’s stone this one!”
 A hail of oysters pours down onto the black seagull. It protects itself as best as it can under its black oily wings. They even throw a champagne bottle, with a message in it. Suddenly, it bursts out laughing! Past a certain point there is nothing more to lose...  So it laughs at the other seagulls, mocks them, shouts out loud the forbidden words: “Hey! Have you seen your feet? You’re splashing about in oil!”
 “What’s this irritating noise?”asks a seagull. “That’s nothing! That’s the wind! Let’s plug our ears and turn our backs it going to pass!”
 At the same time, off shore, the mega tanker called “The Indestructible” breaks down completely. A new oil slick, a dark tsunami submerges all the flock. Only one survives... Our black seagull ! Perched on a heap of oysters, holding the bottle of champagne high, it laughs... Le rire est le propre de la mouette noire It laughs like a whale, while reading the message...
 « SOS ! The captain is dead, slaughtered by the crew for some dollars and gemstones he hid in his luggage. I am the cook. To escape I had to plunge into the oil and breathe by mean of a straw. I can’t take off my apron. It sticks; I can hardly move. The Captain’s parrot accepted to write this message for me: please come and rescue me!”

 At the end of the day, at the end of the story a seagull was saved... But no cook was.


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