As promised, I got to the bottom of this sea gull mystery and I'm happy to say that my research just might cause a lot of tourist brochures, not to mention the World Book Encyclopedia, to be changed. As an "investigative humorist" this could be my finest hour.
But first, to recap:
I happen to be in Snowbird, just out of Salt Lake City, to attend the annual National Society of Newspaper Columnists convention. Since I have never been here before, I pored through the reading material the hotel provided. The 1996 Salt Lake Visitors Guide said that in 1848 a plague of crickets nearly destroyed the crops, which would have ended Brigham Young's settlement. But flocks of sea gulls showed up and ate all the crickets. In gratitude, the sea gull was designated the Utah state bird.
Now, to me, this would be like Hawaii designating the Prehensiled-Tailed Skink as the "state varmint." I mean, how the hell did sea gulls get to Utah?
The answer is that they aren't sea gulls. And the "sea gull" is NOT the Utah state bird. Sure, that's what it says in the encyclopedias and tourist brochures, but actually, the state bird is the "California gull," which, according to my new buddy in the Utah Wildlife Resources Division, has actually nothing to do with the sea. And the gulls did not come to Utah, as even many residents here believe, to live at the Great Salt Lake.
George Oliver, a state zoologist, said these gulls probably came to Utah more than 10,000 years ago. So any suggestion that it was some kind of miracle that sea birds suddenly materialized to gobble up the crickets is off base.
George was distressed when I told him the tourist brochures called the state bird the sea gull. He suggested I call the University of Utah library and see what their books said. And I reported back to George that the library reference department listed the state bird as the sea gull.
"My goodness!" he said. He explained to me in gentle terms, the kind smart guys use when addressing idiots in a polite way, why calling the state bird a sea gull was incorrect. Frankly, it was kind of confusing, but it boils down to this: The California gull is just a bird and "a sea coast is not one of its requirements."
A good analogy would be that instead of attempting to name the humuhumunukunukuapua'a as the Hawaii state fish, we just sort of decided to make the state fish an entire group of fish. I imagine the discussion in the Legislature would have been a lot less contentious.
I told George that the only thing that really mattered was what kind of bird they have listed at the Utah lieutenant governor's office. Happily, I was able to call George back and tell him that the "California gull" is in fact the Utah state bird.
I also learned that the state fish is the rainbow trout, but there has been a move to change that in the Utah legislature. I kindly nominated the humu as the Utah state fish to the lieutenant governor's office.
So, that ends the mystery of the Utah sea gull. There's no such thing and all the books and pamphlets have to be rewritten. Sorry about that.
By the way, the lieutenant governor's office told me Utah's state fossil is the "allosaurus." The woman asked if Hawaii has a state fossil. I said, "Ma'am, we have many. And one is even running for mayor this year."
