Recently on Aliso Niguel’s campus, students have been plagued with a recurring and persistent problem in the form of the seagulls flying overhead.
Main complaints consist of not only the nature of the birds flying incredibly low and dangerously close to students walking in front of the gym and cafeteria area, but also the actions of the seagulls repeatedly pooping on or near students.
Namely an issue that plagues CUSD schools, all school levels from elementary to high school seem to be struggling with influx of large numbers of birds wreaking havoc on the school population.
Recently, the problem has only worsened, with many students noticing the extreme low heights at which the birds fly. Not only that, they seem to frequently defecate while flying at those low heights, terrorizing students.
One of the students that fell victim to these birds is Shane Eicholtz (12), who details his experience, “One time during first semester of senior year near the end of it, I was walking around campus during lunch time, and as I was walking in front of the school near the flagpole, I touched my shirt to adjust it, but I realized there was a wet spot on my shirt, and I saw bird poop on my favorite Depop shirt and what’s worse is that one of my necklaces was touching it. I then go to hang out with my friends for a little bit, zipping my jacket up to conceal the bird poop on my shirt, but the embarrassment of having bird poop on my shirt got the best of me and i had to leave.”
Yet another student who experienced the recent bird frenzy, Sania Mirarefin (12), explains how her car was also targeted, “I was parked underneath the roofed parking spaces, but after getting out of school and getting ready to leave, I saw that the entire top of my car was covered in bird poop.”
The birds must have been flying extremely low for this to happen, and several birds must have contributed for the devastating result to occur.
The proctor who usually watches the front of the school also testifies to the worsening issue of the birds on campus, claiming “the birds have definitely been getting more aggressive recently with low flying and territorial behavior that is hostile to those around them.”
This rising bird problem is likely an issue that comes with the changing seasons, as migration patterns of birds and the location of Aliso’s campus likely coincide to create this larger number of seagulls. Not only that, seagulls find power in those numbers, encouraging each other and thus making their behavior worse.
Students as a general population seem to desire an end to the increasingly worse bird harassment, and although the overall bird problem has persisted through the years and seasons, the more recent drastic increase in the number of seagulls is a particularly unwelcome change to the typical campus environment. Hopefully the problem resolves itself naturally, but the only human solutions are to clean up the birds’ messes and avoid them as much as possible.
