PORTLAND, Maine — The tourists were lucky.
Had they booked their Lucky Catch lobstering excursion a few days earlier, they would have been cooking under a heat dome. Later that week, a torrential downpour would have drenched the tour.
But as captain Brian Rapp steered the St. Croix toward the first lobster trap, Maine’s unpredictable weather was holding this morning. The conditions were good for a possible Jerry sighting.
Jerry would be Rapp’s “pet” seagull.
For the last seven years, Rapp says, the same herring gull has been stopping by the St. Croix on a near-daily basis during the tourist season, which runs from May to October. Whenever the bird lands in front of the captain’s window, Rapp will toss it a cracker, usually Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. Sometimes he holds one near his mouth for Jerry to steal away, like a kiss. Key word: near.
“I don’t put it on my lips, my wife would kill me,” said Rapp, 43.
Jerry’s appearance has become a highlight of the tour for guests who get to witness the human-gull bond, but it’s never guaranteed.
On this bluebird day, though, the group’s good fortune prevailed.
“Guys, this is Jerry,” Rapp said, a big smile flashing above his gray beard. He grabbed the bag of Goldfish waiting next to his steering wheel.
Rapp welcomed guests to partake in his snack ritual as the boat floated next to a lobster trap. Kids in oversize orange fishing aprons hurried to the window where the bird stood at attention. A couple of other gulls hovered nearby, but none nearly as close as Jerry. They don’t have the same history.
In 2018, Rapp was taking a break on the St. Croix when he noticed a “brown puffball” chirping in a flock of birds gathered on the front of the boat. It was a juvenile gull asking its peers for food.
“He wasn’t getting any, so I started flicking him bits of lunch,” Rapp said.
Over the next days, the young bird — or at least one that looked exactly like that puffball — kept returning to the boat. Rapp eventually gave the bird a name: Jerry, after “Little Jerry,” a rooster from the sitcom “Seinfeld.” (We don’t know if Jerry is male or female).
This wasn’t a normal gull experience for Rapp, a Maine native who’s been working on boats for decades. While gulls regularly trail lobster boats (a source of food, as fishermen throw old fish bait into the sea after they check their cages), most keep a healthy distance from people.
“The vast majority of herring gulls are actually very shy,” said Noah Perlut, an ornithologist and professor at the University of New England.
This one, though, would walk up to the captain’s window. So Rapp, who describes himself as an animal lover, kept feeding the bird. His new regular customer moved closer with each encounter. Rapp said it wasn’t unlike training his German shepherd, Mel.
“I use these techniques for training dogs,” he said. “Do the same thing every single time, say the same word every time … that way they get used to it.”
Eventually Jerry started eating from his hand.
“At first he, like, nipped my finger, so I wouldn’t let go of the food until he was very gentle with me,” Rapp said. “Now he’s very sweet about it.”
Rapp watched his visitor transform from a scruffy youth into a full-grown adult with creamy white feathers and piercing pale amber eyes. On the lower sides of the gull’s banana-yellow bill are dots as red as maraschino cherries, an evolutionary clue that shows newborn chicks where to peck their parents when they’re hungry for food.
“See how his right toe goes sideways?” Rapp said, pointing to Jerry’s mauve webbed foot, which was broken years ago. The wonky toe is Jerry’s only notable identifying physical trait, Rapp said.
As if on cue, Jerry turned away and walked across the front of the St. Croix.
“He’s embarrassed,” Rapp said.
Jerry hung around while Rapp continued with the tour. Rapp and his crewmate, Suzanne Driscoll, hoisted a lobster trap marked by a bobbing buoy from the Casco Bay. They showed their audience how to change the lobster trap bait bag and heaved the bits of munched fish off the side of the boat. Jerry and the other gulls abandoned their Goldfish opportunity and rushed to the water to pick off the real deal.
One of the first questions tour customers ask after they meet Jerry is how Rapp knows it’s the same bird. It’s not just the toe, he says.
“Everybody has different characteristics, looks, behaviors — so do animals,” Rapp said. What gives Jerry away, he said, is his willingness to stand under the St. Croix’s overhanging window, which could easily trap a bird. He’s also the only bird that knows tricks, like catching crackers midair or taking one from Rapp’s mouth (or at least looking like he is). No other gulls have replicated the behavior, he said.
Neeltje Boogert, an associate professor of animal behavior who studies gulls at the University of Exeter in Britain, believes that Rapp can tell Jerry from other birds. The more you watch animals, “you really get to tell individuals apart,” she said, adding that gulls can also recognize individual humans. In Cornwall, she’s heard of “several accounts of people basically having similar relationships with gulls here.”
A local told her that the same gull returns to her yard year after year for snacks, “and just sits calmly next to her while she does her gardening,” Boogert said.
Rapp and Jerry have time to continue their friendship. “Their average lifespan is about 12 years, but the oldest known gull is 49,” Boogert said.
Perlut said he’s talked to fishermen and people who work in bait shops in Portland who have “become very attached to particular gulls.”
Then there was Maine lobsterman John Makowsky, who said he had a more than 15-year history with a bird he named Red Eye, and Arryn Skelly, who’s gained millions of followers on social media for posting videos feeding a gull he named Steven.
It’s not that seagulls crave human connection; Rapp recognizes that Jerry’s interest in their partnership is food-driven.
Seagulls are “opportunistic omnivores,” experts say. Their diet consists of marine life, insects, small mammals and whatever else they can get their beaks on, apparently. Sometimes customers scold Rapp for feeding Jerry, but Perlut and Boogert aren’t concerned. While highly processed crackers may not have much nutritional value for birds, “it’s probably making up such a tiny percentage of their diet,” Perlut said.
Maybe Rapp and Jerry’s relationship inspires people to have a new appreciation for seagulls rather than seeing them as garbage-eating picnic thieves, at a time when they could use a little more understanding. Perlut said gulls in the Gulf of Maine are on “a very rapid population decline, and they have been since at least the early 1980s.”
“It sparks people’s curiosity, and I think that’s what you have to start with when you’re thinking about conservation issues,” Perlut said.
For Rapp, it’s more of a perk of the job, and something he sees bring people joy. His stepmom even turned Jerry’s story into a children’s book published this year: “Jerry’s Lucky Catch.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s quite a symbiotic relationship,” he said. “I mean, I guess it gives me happiness. I think it’s adorable. So I give him food.”
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