It is a curious arrangement of Providence that the sky should be stocked with gulls who have never once applied for honest employment, yet are forever found commenting loudly on the labor of those who have. These winged philosophers drift about overhead, issuing their melancholy complaints as if the sea itself had wronged them personally and repeatedly.

Below them labors the fisherman, a man who has made the questionable life choice of attempting to earn supper by persuading fish to cooperate with gravity and netting. He rows and hauls and mutters to himself in a manner that suggests he once believed in easier occupations, such as becoming a senator or a lighthouse keeper.

The gulls, of course, take a dim view of his progress. They follow along with the solemn patience of creditors, crying out as if each cast of the net were a moral failure rather than an economic experiment. One might suspect they are rooting for his success, but their behavior suggests they would be deeply offended if he actually achieved it without their commentary.

And so the day stretches onward, lengthened not merely by tides and labor, but by the gulls’ unceasing editorial remarks from the sky. The fisherman, being a practical man, endures them as one endures taxes or sermons, things unlikely to cease, best survived by keeping one’s head down and one’s net in the water.