In what has to be every dog owner’s worst nightmare a woman in England has been left distraught after a seagull flew away with her miniature Chihuahua.
The 4-year-old pooch named Gizmo had been playing in Becca Hill’s garden in Devon when the bird swooped in and picked up the dog in its beak before flying away, People reports.
Becca (24) has now taken to social media to appeal to people to keep a look out for her beloved pet. “My baby is still missing. Doesn’t feel right not waking up to him licking my face,” she reportedly wrote on Facebook.
She says her partner was putting out the washing when the bird swooped down. “It carried Gizmo a fair way as we couldn’t see him anymore. I have no idea if he was dropped or where he is now,” Hill told DevonLive, adding that her 6-year-old daughter is “really upset” and “missing” her dog.
Neighbours have been checking their roofs and gardens and local rescue organisation UAV put out an alert on Facebook.
Tony Whitehead, a gull expert for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, stated that this was a “rare thing to happen”.
“There are two things that could have caused this. The first one is that there’s been a young gull recently fledged landing in an enclosed back garden where the dog is and there’s been some conflict, so the parents will have swept down to remove the bird.
“Or it’s possibly simply predation. Gulls are great opportunists; they aren’t going to distinguish between a particularly small dog and a small bird.”
There’ve been other seagull attacks on dogs and other animals in recent years.
In July 2015, a Yorkshire terrier was pecked to death in St Columb Minor, Cornwall, by herring gulls who were protecting their nest. In the same month a family’s pet tortoise died after it was attacked by seagulls in Liskeard, Cornwall.
Experts also recently warned that attacks on humans were becoming more common as the birds attempt to protect their nests, as places for them to nest were becoming increasingly harder to find because of habitat loss, Independent reports.
Sources: Facebook, People.com, Independent.co.uk
