Contentment

On Tuesday evenings over 100 precious people are served at our soup kitchen.  Not only are they served a hot meal and a good cup of coffee but they go home with bags and bags of food so that they can “make it another week.”  The leftover bread is thrown into the dumpster where it will mold and rot until it is picked up the following Monday.  Randy and I were at the beach the other day having a cup of coffee and picking on a muffin he had bought at a local bakery.  I brought my camera with me, it always travels with me as I know the disappointment of seeing a shot and not being able to get it because it is in it’s bag on the dining room table, and we were sitting inside of his jeep.  I noticed the seagulls perched on the fence, quickly grabbed a piece of his muffin and bolted out of the car with my camera.  Randy didn’t flinch and hopped out, knowing that I was seeing something with my camera.  I had him extended his hand and sure enough a seagull came and took the bread from his hand.  I didn’t get the shot off that day, but I knew that the birds were hungry and I wanted to help.  When we got back into the jeep I asked him if he could rescue the bread from the dumpster so that I could feed the seagulls.  He did, and filled my car with two hugh black garbage bags full of bread.  Yesterday, Wednesday, I headed to the beach after teaching, hung my camera around my neck and grabbed a few slices of, now, three day old bread.  There were no seagulls, no ducks, no swans….no one was in sight…UNTIL I threw a couple of pieces of bread high into the air.  Birds must communicate with each other, I am convinced!  Within a matter of seconds there were at least 200 seagulls, 3 swans and a dozen mallards.  I wanted them to trust me before photographing them, so I fed them all of the contents of the first black garbage bag.  I knew that I would be limited soon with the natural light as the sun was setting, so I moved a bit faster emptying the contents of bag number two.  Seagulls are “slobs” by nature, so I knew they would continue their feeding frenzy, which they did.  I took over 200 shots yesterday, but this one stands out the most.  It is the “aftermath,” the CONTENTMENT of one gull whose stomach was filled.