Tourists in Venice, a popular European city on the water, will be armed with pistols to fend off impudent and vicious seagulls. This is, of course, not about military 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 excess number of travelers, but also from aggressive and annoying seagulls, which perceive tourists as a target and often take food from them, although they could, as befits their species, to eat fish. However, they do not know how to catch it and probably do not really want to when there are so many easy prey around.
According to The Guardian, one of the hoteliers complained that as soon as guests got up to go to the buffet, “ seagulls pounce on the food and take it”, resulting in broken plates and glasses.
The idea to hand out water guns to vacationers came about during a recent workshop where hygiene expert Francesca Boemo said seagulls are dangerous and a problem “for health and hygiene, as well as for buildings and the environment.” However, they cannot be exterminated like pest mice, since ivory gulls are a rare and protected species. Therefore, such a solution was found – to use water pistols so as not to harm the birds, but to scare them away.
By the way, the authorities have been worried about the skilful and perfidious attack of seagulls on tourists before and have made attempts to fight impudent thieves. To do this, they used the traditions of the court of the French Louis XIII, as well as “our” Alexei Mikhailovich: “connected” falconers with birds of prey on the glove, which, as expected, were supposed to scare away gulls. But it turned out to be too difficult and expensive.
Now officials have made another attempt to keep the birds away from tourists by allowing hoteliers to issue bright orange squirt guns to guests. Two hotels have already done this – Gritti Palace and Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal. According to the hotel administration, an unfamiliar object of bright color causes anxiety in seagulls. For example, 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 fly away as soon as they see guns.
Recall that Venice, which continues to suffer from overtourism, has announced new rules for vacationers. This year, the city is going to introduce a new fee for those wishing to visit the historic center. Guests will have to pay €5 and go through a turnstile to enter the city. However, if there are too many tourists in the squares and streets, the turnstiles will not let new arrivals through. The new scheme, which uses the Venice Intelligent Dispatch Center, will also monitor the behavior of travelers throughout the tourist city using their numbers.
For those who care about a healthy lifestyle, we recommend reading: “Delicious” way to improve health named heart, brain and prevent aging.”
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