48 “COME DUCK SHOOTING WITH ME” 
looked very serious and prayers were offered for Divine 
assistance. 
Almost immediately in answer to the prayers, great 
flocks of gulls appeared and quickly destroyed the 
plague of locusts. To-day the gull is a sainted bird in 
Utah, at least there is a State fine of $25.00 for killing 
one and it takes a saint to give up that much money 
in Utah. 
There’s another odd thing about gulls, there are just 
as many now as there were twenty years ago. A rocky 
island in East Lake is their favorite nesting place. It 
is covered with gulls in the spring. Many families 
arerearedeachsummer. Noneare killed, but every fall 
sees the same number of gulls flying about as the year 
before. In fact, I know several individual gulls by sight 
from odd feather markings and see them year after year 
cruising over the lake. Where do the young birds 
go? Are they turned adrift by cruel-hearted parents 
and told in emphatic gull language to go elsewhere and 
make a living, or what becomes of them? 
In the East Lake there seem to be two parties of 
different politics, possibly standpatters and progres- 
sives, among the gulls, each faction occupying differ- 
ent mudbanks as roosting places at night. Gulls 
hereabouts are not early risers. It was eight o’clock 
before there were even symptoms of wakefulness on the 
two mudbanks. I watched them through field-glasses. 
The first sign of preparedness was when a gull on the 
edge of the mudbank opened and stretched its wings. 
Then several other gulls went through the same per- 
formance. By that time the first gull was executing a 
slow comical sort of dance, taking the kinks out of its 
legs. Then all began dancing. Finally a big brown 
gull with a gray head and wing feathers sprang clumsily 
