My wife and I were relaxing at the end of our dock one summer day. It was very windy, the waves were rolling into the bay and breaking as they entered the shallow water. We saw a seagull floating on the water and slowly being rolled toward the rocky shoreline.

Three seagulls flew in and seemed to be dive-bombing the gull in the water. We didn’t understand what the gulls were doing.  We decided to walk through the shallow water toward the gull before it was in trouble on the rocky shoreline.

When we reached the gull, we could tell it was under stress and could not fly. My wife placed her windbreaker over the gull and carried it back to the dock. The seagull was calm. It had a fishhook through its wing and eyelid. I went up to the cottage and retrieved wire cutters. I cut off the fishhook barb and gently pulled the hook out of the eyelid and wing.

The seagull flew off and was joined by the other gulls. The next summer we were followed in our boat by a seagull for some distance and length of time.  We say it was the rescued seagull thanking us for saving its life.