Arm tourists in Venice – a popular European city on the water – to fight off defiant and evil seagulls. Of course, this is not about weapons, but about ordinary water pistols, local media reported.
The fact is that in recent years the Italian city has suffered not only from overtourism – an excessive number of travelers, but also from aggressive and annoying seagulls, who perceive tourists as a target and often take away their food, although they could, as befits their species, eat fish. However, they do not know how to catch it and, apparently, do not want to, when there is so much easy prey around.
According to The Guardian, one of the hoteliers complained that as soon as guests get up to go to the buffet, “seagulls pounce on food and take it away”, resulting in broken plates and glasses.
The idea of handing out water pistols to holidaymakers came at a recent seminar in which hygiene expert Francesca Boemo said seagulls were dangerous and a problem “for health and hygiene, as well as for buildings and the environment.” However, they cannot be eradicated as pests, as white gulls are a rare protected species. Therefore, a solution was found – to use water pistols, so as not to harm the birds, and scare them away.
By the way, the authorities were still worried about the clever and treacherous attack of seagulls on tourists and tried to fight the brazen thieves. To do this, they used the traditions of the court of French Louis XIII: “connected” falconers with birds of prey on gloves, which were supposed to scare away seagulls. But it turned out to be too complicated and expensive.
Now officials have made a new attempt to keep birds away from tourists – they allowed hoteliers to give guests bright orange water pistols. This has already been done by two hotels – Gritti Palace and Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal. According to the hotel administration, an unfamiliar brightly colored object is alarming to seagulls. Yes, Gritti Palace owner Palo Lorenzini told local media that guests “don’t even need to use them”, you can just keep them on the table: birds get scared as soon as they see guns.
It will be recalled that Venice, which continues to suffer from overtourism, announced new rules for vacationers. This year, the city intends to introduce a new fee for those wishing to visit the historic center. Guests will have to pay € 5 and go through the turnstile to enter the city. However, if there are too many tourists in the squares and streets, the turnstiles will not miss the visitors. The new scheme, which uses the Venetian Intelligent Control Center, will also monitor the behavior of travelers throughout the tourist city, using their numbers.
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