Gull will need new winter home after dealership closes (VA Beach)

[Donna]

WHEN SATURN of Virginia Beach closes and moves out of its Laskin Road showroom this spring, it will be leaving behind more than memories of a longtime Beach car dealership.

Bert, the ring-billed gull, will no longer have a winter home, said Gary Williamson, a sales consultant at Saturn.

Williamson has been taken with the 5-year-old friendship his service department colleague Ernie Hardy has had with the gull.

Bert, who arrived on the department's windowsill looking for a handout one Saturday in December 2004, has been befriended by Hardy ever since.

"He was pecking on the window, and I went out to feed him," Hardy said, "and he started coming every day.

"I named him Bert because my name was Ernie."

At the time Hardy had recently joined the National Audubon Society, so he was particularly interested in his new friend. He was able to identify the bird as a first year ring-billed gull because of his mottled plumage.

Now a handsome grown- up gray and white with a black tail, Bert lives up to his name with a wide black ring circling his yellow bill. No one knows if Bert really is a male, but the name seems to fit.

Bert is a creature of habit. Every winter, he migrates back to Saturn from summer nesting grounds in Canada. He arrives almost like clockwork to tap on the service department windows.

Instinctively, Hardy knew that Bert would arrive a certain Saturday this December and "when I looked, there he was," Hardy said.

Every day, until he leaves to migrate back in late March, Bert comes to be fed, almost as if for breakfast lunch and dinner.

In between meals he's often perched on the corner of the showroom roof where he fends off other gulls interested in his unique dining arrangements. When he's hungry, Bert flies down to peck at the service department windows to get attention.

"Customers will ask, 'What's that?' " said Hardy. "That's our pet bird. He's hungry."

"He gets really irate when you don't feed him," noted Williamson. "Bert's squawking again!"

"I can tell if he's nearby because we know his voice," said Lisa Horan, who also works in the service department. "You hear his squawk."

Hardy generally feeds pieces of trail bar to Bert, and Horan feeds him trail mix. Whatever the treat, Bert does not like to share. He defends his territory.

"It's Bert's no-fly zone." Williamson said.

They all worry about what will happen next winter when Bert arrives and finds Saturn has closed up shop and moved to Cavalier Mazda in Chesapeake. Hardy hopes that someone else will take up the friendship when he's gone. With Bert's persistence, it's highly likely.

"He has that moxie," Williamson said. "He has that piz azz."

[valhalla]

I think it is the guys!  Rich deals with a LOT of dealerships in MD an VA and stray birds are common in and around the dealership.  One guy has a pet chicken running around the shop - rescued from the road near the eastern shore chicken farms.  "Watch the Chicken" is the cry when you first show up.  :-)

[Donna]

I think it is the guys!  Rich deals with a LOT of dealerships in MD an VA and stray birds are common in and around the dealership.  One guy has a pet chicken running around the shop - rescued from the road near the eastern shore chicken farms.  "Watch the Chicken" is the cry when you first show up.  :-)

See...........men are sensitive!

[valhalla]

I think it is the guys!  Rich deals with a LOT of dealerships in MD an VA and stray birds are common in and around the dealership.  One guy has a pet chicken running around the shop - rescued from the road near the eastern shore chicken farms.  "Watch the Chicken" is the cry when you first show up.  :-)

See...........men are sensitive!

   I don't know about that, but these are blue-collar guys, driving around in their pick-ups, with their dogs and gun racks in the back.   

[Donna]

I think it is the guys!  Rich deals with a LOT of dealerships in MD an VA and stray birds are common in and around the dealership.  One guy has a pet chicken running around the shop - rescued from the road near the eastern shore chicken farms.  "Watch the Chicken" is the cry when you first show up.  :-)

See...........men are sensitive!

   I don't know about that, but these are blue-collar guys, driving around in their pick-ups, with their dogs and gun racks in the back.