A Speed Run to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and an Injured Gull

My plan is to try to post an update on our travels here once a week or so. We started our Year on the Road adventure on Thursday, September 26. On a drizzly afternoon, we made it to Cleveland, just ahead of Hurricane Helene, which brought high winds and power outages to Cincinnati as we got out of town. Then the next day, remarkably, we encountered a hitherto unknown wormhole on I-90 in upstate New York and made it across to Massachusetts the next day in quite a bit less time than Google said it would take. Inconceivable!

On Saturday morning, we arrived at the Woods Hole ferry dock with a reservation for a Sunday afternoon boat. No worries, no crowds—we got on the boat that was already at the dock and arrived in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard before 1:00 pm. After quickly unloading the ton of boxes and bags we had stuffed in the van at the last minute as we cleared out our house on Covedale Avenue, we went to Edgartown to pick up our friends Mark and Anne Stepaniak. They had enjoyed a couple of days in and around Edgartown before coming Up Island with us to West Tisbury. We saw the highlights of the island with them over the next few days, including Menemsha’s Dutcher Dock and the Gay Head lighthouse, Long Point and Tisbury Great Pond, the Methodist Camp Meeting and the carousel in Oak Bluffs, Lambert’s Cove, Vineyard Haven’s shops, and a sunset from the cliffs of Aquinnah (the light was insane!), before they headed back to America on the ferry Tuesday morning. The highlight of the weekend was a full Italian Sunday afternoon dinner at Mike’s cousins’ house—thanks, Anthony and Beth!

There was some excitement on Monday when we found a bird sitting in the driveway of the cottage. After identifying it as a gull—probably an immature gull—we discovered it seemed to have a broken wing. When I got close to it, it hopped off into the woods, but then worked its way around to the back deck of the cottage and settled in. Mike gave it water and I tore up a pancake left over from breakfast. We still can’t believe we fed a seagull on purpose, but we also called Animal Control in West Tisbury, and after tracking down a rogue dog on State Road, the Animal Control officer and her own dog, Finnegan, arrived to see what they could do about the situation. By that time Mark had taken some close-up photos and we could see that there was something like an Ace bandage (or a piece of cardboard?) stuck on its wing for some reason—we weren’t sure if someone tried to splint the wing, or if it was garbage that had somehow gotten stuck there.

Photo courtesy of Mark Stepaniak, Esq.

The officer caught the watered, fed, and refreshed bird in her net (I guess it was feeling mellow after that good pancake breakfast), and then put it in a cat carrier to take it to a volunteer she knew who deals with chickens and occasionally hawks and other birds found hurt on the island. We like to think the bird, which was indeed an immature gull, will pull through and remember its breakfast on New Lane fondly.

A lot of adventures for not quite a whole first week on the road . . . but we are looking to relax for a few weeks at the Rookery in West Tisbury. We are hoping word doesn't get out that we are running an aviary first aid station here.