The Confessions Of A Human Gannet

As I was rumaging through an old hard drive, I discovered some old copies of my Myspace blog. Yes Myspace! Remember that?

Well one in particular I thought was quite funny, and I remember it as clear as day and (with a little modification) thought I would share it with you. Hope you enjoy!

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Gannet Memories

Last Sunday I sat in front of my TV; in yet another party induced coma, watching the affable Lord Attenborough's 'Life of Birds'.

As I sat there staring at the screen I pondered and pontificated as to what it would be like to be a bird. Driven by such basic instinctive and genetic needs, living in a constant cycle of eat and avoid being eaten.

Then out of the blue I was reminded of a past event whereby I knew utterly and completely what it would be like if I were a gannet. A gannet let me remind you, is a fast diving seabird that has a capacity to swallow vast amounts of fish in a small amount of time.

The time I’m talking of was a poker evening at a friend’s house. It was on a Sunday evening and I had been out at a mad party the night before having not eaten anything since the previous afternoon.

This was in the early days of mine and my friend’s poker playing ‘careers’, thus enthusiasm for the game was plentiful. At this particular evening we had set up two tables, one containing ten players, and another of six.

As I mentioned before I hadn’t eaten for approximately thirty six hours and was completely famished. Our host had stuck some oven fries on, and when the time came he placed them onto the middle of the table.

Needless to say I was extremely grateful for this and driven by the basic human urge of hunger I extended my arm and dipped my hand into the large bowl and fished out a handful of chips.

Unfortunately so did fifteen other people, what happened then was unique as I had not felt this before, nor had I since.

The Hunger Games

My brain did a quick calculation as to how many chips were in the bowl, divided by how many people were in the room, multiplied by how long it took me to finish off a mouthful.

My stomach panicked as my brain told it that given all the variables it cleary wasn’t going to get enough food to satisfy itself. Suddenly and without warning all brain functions seemed to cease and I was reduced to primordial animal function.

The old soft computer had told my mouth only to chew when absolutely necessary. At the same time it told my arms to set up a continuous production line between the bowl of chips and my mouth (think, Homer Simpson in his most ravenous state). The results were stunning even to me!

I basically started shovelling chips into my mouth at a rate I didn’t think was possible, I was managing to chew just enough to swallow the ever solidifying lump of chip matter in my mouth.

About halfway through the bowl; as I felt the continuing line of semi mulched chips slipping down my throat into my belly, I realised that this must be what a gannet felt like when feeding, a steady stream of food being transported from mouth to stomach in seconds.

The thought of this caught my brain off guard and I started to laugh, which to my stomach’s horror saw the production line of food start to reverse its way up my oesophagus and start the short journey back towards my mouth!

This, my stomach decided, was an unacceptable turn of events. So ever watchful for my well being my stomach sent an immediate message to my brain to shut off the humour region and get on with the serious business of making sure it was full. To which my brain dutifully obliged and thus the steady stream of chips reverted and carried on its merry journey back down to my stomach.

Once the bowl of chips had been finished in around ten seconds flat and I managed to chew and swallow the huge mouthful of food I had acquired. I could finally laugh at the absurd feeling I had experienced a few seconds previous.

Happy And Full

I informed my friends that I had achieved perfect empathy with the gannet species and that whilst I was shovelling food into my mouth; nothing else had mattered apart from making sure that I ate more than anyone else.

“Greedy bastard!”

They all yelled almost as one, but after quizzing each of them I found that all of them had eaten within the last thirty six hours and therefore couldn’t make me feel guilty at all.

"Instead of anger," I cried; "it is reverence and awe you should feel, for how many of you here can say that you truly have felt what it is like to feed your animal instinct?"

They were not convinced, although they did see the funny side.

Anyway I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that fully sated, my mind could concentrate on taking their money at the card table and I walked away that night with £90 more than I’d started with and a serious case of indigestion.

WHAT ABOUT YOU GUYS, HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PERFECT AFFINITY WITH ANOTHER SPECIES? OR MAYBE YOU HAVE BEEN A GREEDY GANNET LIKE ME? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!

Title image: Kristina Hoeppner on Unsplash

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