A grandmother from Brighton, East Sussex, claims she was held hostage in her home by a flock of seagulls for three whole days. The woman attempted to contact the police for help, but they refused to assist.
According to the Daily Mail , 80-year-old Barbara Cox went outside to hang her laundry on the clothes line in her garden. As she attempted to pin the clothes to the line, two seagulls swooped down and attacked her. One of the seagulls grasped her leg and gouged into her flesh.
With a bleeding injury on her leg, Cox rushed back inside and hid from the vicious seagulls, until the pain in her leg became too much to handle.
“It was horrible. I was too scared to go outside of my house for three days but I had to go to A&E in the end because my leg was hurting.”
Grandmother is trapped inside her own house for three days by vicious seagull https://t.co/633IXgNW0S
— Guillaume Mallet (@GuillaumeMallet) September 22, 2016
When Cox realized the birds would not allow her to leave the house, she decided to call the police for assistance. The individual that answered the call stated that the police could not visit her since the attacker was not a person. The reason for the inability to send an officer was due to the lack of funding for such frivolous calls.
Cox pleaded for the dispatcher to use her portion of the taxes to pay for the police to come out, but the dispatcher refused.
According to Metro , Cox fell while trying to fight the seagulls during the attack, but was unable to fight back. Instead, she chose to run inside and protect herself from their vicious onslaught.
“I fell back trying to fight them off, then managed to get up crying and saw the blood on my leg and went inside to get it washed and sterilized.”
Cox feels as though she made it inside just in time, worried that any longer and the seagulls might have pecked her eyes out, or worse.
After thinking about the attack, Cox doesn’t blame the seagulls themselves, but thinks they may have been protecting a dead seagull that was in her lawn. Being trapped inside the house for three days allowed her plenty of time to think about the situation.
Gran kept prisoner in her own home for three days by vicious SEAGULL https://t.co/SKtKCvvtg2 pic.twitter.com/VYKnL2AmGT
— Mirror Weird News (@MirrorWeirdNews) September 21, 2016
Brighton tends to have an issue with seagulls, according to Councilor Gill Mitchell, claiming that the Brighton and Hove City Council receive many complaints about the vicious birds.
“We receive many inquiries about seagulls and have advice on our website. Our pest control team can give advice and a free quote on how to pest proof properties to stop gulls from nesting.”
Barbara Cox has since decided to become an advocate for not feeding the seagulls and inviting them into the neighborhood. If the city council will not allow her to speak during a meeting, she has chosen to visit each house individually, hoping to get her message out.
“All I want now is the council to send out some letters telling people not to feed the seagulls.”
According to Mitchell, he will not spend more time or money on releasing information regarding how to keep seagulls away from the community. In his opinion, the information available through their pest control team is more than enough at this time. However, if Barbara Cox feels that walking door to door to spread the word will ease the situation, she is free to do so.
Cox’s mission is to spread the word about how cruel seagulls can be, especially toward the elderly of the community. Her situation ended well, but could have taken a bad turn.
[Featured Image by attilavalentina/Shutterstock]
