Fed's: We're here to confiscate your 150 year old dead seagull

[Maine-ah]

"According to Tutone, Robert Rothe and Eric Holmes, agents from the Department of Interior, went to Cappy's Thursday to confiscate a mounted seagull she purchased more than 20 years ago. The gull was mounted in 1854 and is under glass in a gilt frame hanging, appropriately enough, in the Crow's Nest — the upstairs dining room." (snip)

The common seagull, a scavenger thought of by many as the East Coast's vulture, spends nearly all of the year in coastal Maine. Still, they are considered migratory birds. "I'm still not clear whether seagulls are considered an endangered species," Tutone said.

Tutone said the agents did not care that "this piece of history is 150 years old and was mounted when there was a bounty on sea gulls. They want me to take the bird out of the frame and turn it over to them … It is so old it will fall apart and be just a collection of feathers."

Tutone, who purchased the gull at a sea captain's auction more than two decades ago, said she is sadden and disappointed to be forced to have the bird removed from her establishment. She also feels, to some extent, it is a waste of taxpayers' money for agents to worry about confiscating antique birds when there must be more serious issues to deal with.





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