Wanted

My dear readers, the story I'm about to share is true. 

Unfathomable even.

Prepare yourself for a tale of deception and thievery of the boldest kind.

Let me set the scene for you ...

We were having a grand time on the beach ...

unaware we were being stalked by the Scan, Squawk, and Swoop Gang - SSS for short.

Never heard of SSS you say? Oh, you may not have heard their name but if you have ever been to the beach they've  sized you up while you were innocently frolicking along the shore oohing and ahhing over their presence. Here's a picture I took after the incident for your reference:

Recognize any of them? Ah, yes; see the leader - his feathers are just a bit more ruffled then the others. hmph.

I digress ... we are enjoying ourselves and had planned well to make a long morning of it. Lots of water and a few granola bars (chocolate chip and vanilla chip for those inquiring minds).

And then it happened. Those words you dread to hear; that is unless you are prepared as we were ... Maaamaa ... I'm hungry. No worries. Got it covered. I waddle out of the ocean to our towels and realize our 'set up' is amiss. I had placed a towel over the cooler to try to provide a bit of shade for the granola bars (I had put the bars in an outside pocket of the cooler because we learned the hard way that they practically freeze when placed on the inside ...) - as I approach our stuff the towel over the cooler is displaced. I didn't think much of it at first until I tried to locate the granola bars. I thought I was loosing my mind. They weren't where I thought I put them so I looked inside the cooler (doubting that I would have made that mistake again) ... not there either. Hmmmm. Would I have put them in our other bag? And so on and so on ...

Then I got a bit panicky. Someone had been in our stuff. I felt very vulnerable. Were they chomping down on our snacks behind a sand dune watching me break into a sweat while digging through everything we toted to the beach? Upon further investigation I realized that nothing valuable was missing (cell phone - camera). Hmmmm. Why would someone take 4 granola bars and nothing else. At least a bottle of water to wash them down with, right?

Meanwhile the boys are starving now and the best laid plans have gone awry. Rocky swears he didn't touch the snacks and so do the boys. We decide that if someone took our granola bars they must have needed them much more than we do.

I still couldn't shake it. It was too weird. And then we saw them - SSS. They were squawking and swooping and eating the tiny fish in the surf ... then Rocky called it.

It was the birds.

We decided to pack up and head back for lunch before we withered away from lack of nutrition. As we are leaving I happened to spot this

They're sloppy. SSS is wanted for burglary, unlawful disposal of liter, and for fraud. They better watch their feathers. We are on to them.