An 80-year-old British woman said she felt like a prisoner in her own home after she was attacked repeatedly by a flock of seagulls.
Barbara Cox from Brighton and Hove City in Southeast England was targeted by the birds while putting her washing out with one gripping her leg and another gouging at it.
Police said they couldn’t help and after three days she finally made a dash for it to go to hospital to get the leg treated.
“I went out to hang my washing out and I thought ‘what’s that at the bottom of the garden’? and saw it was a dead chick,” she told the ‘Metro’ newspaper.
‘The next thing I knew two seagulls swooped down on me and one attached itself to my leg. I was terrified – I’m 80 years old.
“It came down and grabbed me on the leg with its claws. It pecked me and caused me to bleed….I phoned the police up and said ‘I’ve been attacked’ and they said ‘by who?’
‘I said “no, by a seagull’ and ‘can you send somebody to pick up this bird’ and they said ‘oh no we haven’t got the funding for that….’I said ‘can’t you use my percentage of the taxes I pay for that?”.’
She added: “It seemed like they were attacking forever but it must have been a minute or so. I fell back trying to fight them off, then managed to get up crying and saw the blood on my leg and went inside to get it washed and sterilized.”
The woman said she was too scared to go outside of her house for three days but that she had to go to go to the hospital in the end because her leg was hurting.