There was a bizarre “crime” in Nantucket, Massachusetts, this week that had locals both laughing and scratching their heads.
Heather Stevens Woodbury, who helps run her family’s business, Wicked Island Bakery, was enjoying a quiet afternoon when she got a startling text from one of her employees.
“It said my rear car window was shattered,” Woodbury told The Dodo. “I was like, ‘Why would someone throw a rock or smash my window? I’m a nice person! I do a lot for my community!’”
Confused and upset, Woodbury called the police and rushed to the scene. When two officers arrived, they began inspecting the damage — and what they found quickly turned the situation from alarming to unbelievable.
“Between all the cars were these shattered shells,” Woodbury said. “Then one officer looks inside my car and asks, ‘Is there any reason you’d have a quahog in your back seat?’”
A quahog, a large hard-shelled clam, was sitting right there on her floorboard — cold and fresh, as if it had just come from the ocean.
“I just stared at it,” Woodbury said. “And then the officer goes, ‘I hate to tell you this, but I think a seagull dropped it.’”
That’s when it clicked. A hungry seagull had probably been flying overhead with its lunch when it accidentally (or perhaps strategically) dropped the clam — smashing it straight through Woodbury’s car window.
“I used some expletives,” she admitted, laughing. “I was like, ‘No way!’”
Woodbury asked if the police would file a report so she could explain the bizarre accident to her insurance company. But there wasn’t much they could do.
“The officer told me, ‘There won’t be a police report because this isn’t criminal. It’ll just go in the call log — there’s no one to charge with a crime,’” Woodbury said.
That comment sparked an idea — because this might not be the first time a seagull had caused trouble on the island.
“About a year ago, someone’s wallet was stolen right out of their shopping cart by a seagull,” Woodbury said. “There were even photos of the bird sitting on the grocery store roof with the wallet in its mouth. So now, my car is officially the second major seagull crime on Nantucket.”
The local paper, The Nantucket Current, had a field day with the story, dubbing it part of a “seagull crime spree.” Some residents are now half-jokingly keeping an eye on the skies — just in case the culprit strikes again.
And maybe, he already has.
Woodbury placed the infamous quahog outside her bakery after the incident, but when she checked back an hour later, it was gone.
“Either someone took it as a souvenir,” she said, “or the seagull came back to the scene of the crime and took the evidence so he couldn’t be prosecuted.”
She laughed. “You really can’t make this stuff up.”
