PEOPLE phone the emergency services for the oddest reasons.

A woman in the UK once called an ambulance asking paramedics to come round and bring in her washing.

Meanwhile, a man phoned the police to complain that a takeaway had put mushrooms on his pizza when, shock horror, he hated the vegetable.

And an elderly woman in Blackpool once dialled 999 to ask the fire brigade to come round with their specialist equipment to clean it up.

Then there was the time someone called the police because they thought they had been kidnapped and blindfolded...in fact they had woken up under their duvet.

Unbelievably, these are all real scenarios.

But, wait. Listen to this. This really takes the biscuit (or indeed the sandwich).

A Bristol man phoned 999 to report a thief. The thief was a seagull.

The emergency, in this man’s words, went like this: “I just walked out of Sainsbury's towards McDonald's right, and one of them seagulls basically tried to rip the sandwich out of my hand.”

I love the reaction from the call handler who said: “What's this got to do with the police? It's a seagull."

I can understand it might be traumatising for someone to try and pinch your lunch - we've all had that Ross from Friends overreaction moment when it comes to sandwich stealing.

But you’ve got to admire the brazen bird for trying, no? It also serves you right for walking while eating – a very bad habit indeed.

Seagulls are getting loads of bad press at the moment. They’ve even made got the Prime Minister in a flap, admittedly not hard to do.

He’s called for a “big conversation” about culling gulls.

The hysteria would suggest we were living in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

We're not though. According to the RSPB gulls are suffering "moderate declines".

The last thing we need is culling.

I’m sticking my head above the parapet to say: gulls are not that bad. They're fascinating.

The Evening Times reported recently that residents in Cumbernauld are calling on council bosses to deal with their disruptive birds.

Apparently they’re waking people up at all hours and leaving a mess everywhere. It sounds like the Merchant City on a Saturday night.

But you haven’t seen anything unless you’ve lived on the coast.

The seagulls in Aberdeen are huge. They’ve evolved into super seagulls. They have become so infamous that they even provoke reactions from football bosses.

Last month Aberdeen FC told of the challenges it faces in dealing with the "intelligent" gulls that mob Pittodrie.

Let's just all calm down and remember they're just nature.

They may be noisy but they're just birds with a bit of spirit about them.

Long live the gulls.