A north Dublin butcher was stunned when a woman arrived into the shop yesterday with a dead seagull hoping they would gut it so she could eat it.
The woman arrived into the butchers in the Omni Shopping Centre in Santry with the seagull in a plastic bag to the bafflement of staff and other customers.
Conall Molloy was in the shop at the time and shared details of the incident on Twitter.
He said: "So yesterday, in the Omni Shopping Centre Santry, a jewel of suburban North Dublin, a woman entered the butchers with a plastic bag.
"This plastic bag contained a dead seagull, which she wanted the butchers to gut. So that she could eat it."
Other Twitter users flocked to pass comment on the unusual story with one joking that the woman "should have taken it to Bear Grylls".
But some more sceptical tweeters refused to believe the feathery tale, saying: "I’ll take 'things that never happened' for one."
But that Doubting Thomas was soon put back in his nest when another user produced a video that proved people weren't being gull-ible in believing the story.
In the video one of the butchers can be heard explaining to the woman that it's against the law for them to gut the bird while another stunned worker adds: "You can't have seagulls in here, no."
One staff member then asks to have a look at the bird with the woman then opening the plastic bag to reveal the dead seagull inside.
But the woman' idea may not be quite as out there as it first seems.
While seabirds are generally not eaten due to their oily and fishy taste, this wasn't always the case and they appear to have been a reasonably popular dish in the 19th century.
According The Curiosities of Food; or, Dainties and Delicacies of Different Nations , published in 1859, “The Chinese shoot sea-gulls in large numbers, which add to their stock of food.
"A man is constantly engaged in the bay of San Francisco, California, shooting sea-gulls, which he sells to the Chinese at the rate of 25 cents each."
And The country house, a collection of useful information and recipes, published seven years later, even includes a recipe for preparing and cooking seagulls.
It reads: "Take a sharp knife and put in under the skin at the back part of the neck, and carry down to the tail feathers; after which pull off the skin down to the middle of the legs, and next take out the intestines.
"Leave the birds in salt and water for eight hours, when their fishy taste will be found to be quite gone, and you can either cook them as you would pigeon pie or in any other way."
Think we'll be giving it a miss all the same.
