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News in the Telegraph of Birds Wreaking Chaos in Oxford
The Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford
An interesting and, in some ways, amusing story caught our eye in the Telegraph this week, which definitely had hints of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds.
Blavatnik School of Government, the University of Oxford Institution where the leaders of tomorrow are nurtured, has been brought to its knees by rogue seagulls!
The Blavatnik School came into being in 2016 and is a beautiful glass building which is said to have cost £55 million to build. While the rest of Oxford enjoys relative peace during the University vacations, Blavatnik stays open and tends to be busy all year round.
Gulls apparently mistook stones for eggs and in an attempt to break them by dropping them on the building's roof, ended up smashing the glass
A few days ago, a sudden tap, tap, tapping noise could be heard on the central pane of glass high above people’s heads. There was a pause, more tapping and then a loud crack. The commotion was being caused by hungry seagulls throwing stones onto the glass. Seagulls do this with eggs, smashing them so that they can feed on the yolks, and it is thought that they were trying to smash the stones, believing them to be eggs. Instead, they smashed the glass!
Where the glass had broken, the building was now open to the elements (and the birds), and the building was unsafe, so everyone had to be evacuated. Since then, the building has been closed for safety reasons, and cranes have been brought in to aid the people working to repair the roof.
The Telegraphs said:
If this is a battle of man versus bird, then the birds are clearly winning. Five days after the incident, the entire institute is boarded up, the doors are locked, and the lights are off.
One post-graduate student called Oliver, who has both studied and lectured at Blavatnik, says it is the only time he has ever known the building to be closed. He said that it is the sort of place that only closes on Christmas Day.
Mohammed Ahmed, who runs a newsagent opposite the building, said that the gulls had unleashed chaos.
Daphne du Maurier clearly knew what she was talking about when she wrote her novella, The Birds!