In 1997, I saw something horrible near Bodega Bay, the town where Alfred Hitchcock set his 1963 horror film The Birds. I saw a huge and overfed seagull eating fried chicken out of a KFC box some human had abandoned on a picnic table. The seagull picked up a deep-fried wing with its beak, raised its head skyward, and swallowed the thing whole. Its neck expanded and contracted and swayed as the wing went down to the hell of its stomach. A bird eating a bird near the town where a movie about evil birds is set. Twenty-one years later, I can still recall that monstrous moment as if it happened a few hours ago. by Charles Mudede