Matt vs. The Seagulls Or "A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Birds"

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to welcome you all here for tonight’s title match! In this corner, weighing in at 160 pounds, the mountain man from New York State, Maaaaatt Cosneeeeeett!

*Audience applause*

And in this corner, weighing in at three pounds, the flying poop-machine from the Orient, the black-tailed seagullllll!

Tonight’s fight will take place in just a few minutes folks, right here in the parking lot of Kabushima shrine in Hachinohe.

Oh wait-here comes the contender right now, buying a pre-fight snack of shrimp-flavored crackers.

Little does he realize that his opponents recognize the bag! He’s instantly surrounded! Oh, the humanity! (Click on the image above to see the fight)
Kabushima shrine, located in Hachinohe’s industrial district, is a 700 year-old shrine that sits atop a small island. The island is in fact, no longer an actual island, as it was connected to the mainland about 50 years ago in order to accommodate visitors. At any rate, the land that the shrine sits on is a breeding ground for Asian black-tailed seagulls-perhaps one of very few in the world that sits so perilously close to human civilization. Every February, somewhere in the neighborhood of 44,000 seagulls (umineko in Japanese, literally “sea cat,” due to the gull’s cat like squawk) descend upon the island where they live and breed until the end of the summer.

The shrine was originally built for local fishermen, so that they might pray for good catches. Fishermen often observe the flocks of seagulls to inform them of where the concentrations of fish are highest and this shrine probably evolved as a means for giving thanks to the gulls. Here we see Matt putting his differences with the birds aside and washing the statues of the seagulls. What good sportsmanship folks!

By the way, if you’ve never seen 44,000 seagulls in the same place before, I would heartily recommend a trip to Kabushima. Here you can find seagulls doing all sorts of things:

Flying.
Standing in a repeating pattern.
Squawking (there was a lot of this going on. A lot).
Pooping.
Sitting on shrubbery.
Standing on top of other seagulls.

As for the title match, well, I don’t want to shame the defeated party any further. Let’s just say that this picture is worth a thousand words and leave it at that.