NEWTON'S LAW: SOME GULL: DON'T FIRE 'TIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES

What do sea gulls and Palestinians have in common? For both, the place they consider their homeland is a dangerous place.

Palestinians, of course, are humans who claim a religious endowment in the form of property. They are ardent in their beliefs. They've also been known to return fire.

Gulls only do what comes naturally. That applies also to the only weapon at their disposal, but gravity and absence of wind are necessary for accurate firing. Otherwise, the fowl, generally a pleasant addition to the landscape, are not argumentative.

Unlike the Palestinians, who want a bounded piece of ground, the gulls think in terms of earth and sky as a global entitlement. Unless you're Tippi Hedren and visiting Bodega Bay, who would begrudge these carefree birds this birthright?

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, to name one.

Occupying the airspace near the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge on Long Island are the birds of Boeing. They fly from John F. Kennedy International Airport, a busy facility with little time for aesthetic reverie.

The gulls share this airspace, contrary to any logic regarding sound waves and meek creatures. Occasionally, the two entities tangle. Boeing wins every time.

Airport management still doesn't like the odds. The birds observe no regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration and frequently turn jet engines into "Gull-O-Matics," busting up the motors and sending one more soul to fowl heaven in the process.

In 1989, jets smacked into gulls at a rate of once every two days. Between 1979 and 1990, 37 airplane engines were damaged at the airport after ingesting sea gulls. No accidents have resulted from these and other incidents, but 40 takeoffs had to be aborted.

Last May, a gull was strained through an engine just before the jetliner attached blew 10 tires and cooked its brakes trying to stop before becoming airborne.

The airport and its governing agency, the port authority, tried a variety of methods to convince the gulls laughing gulls, if you accept such irony of the technological incompatibility inherent in this relationship.

Methods from chemicals to cannons were used to chase the birds away from the runways.

Nothing worked well enough. So the airport opted for what must be regarded as a 12-gauge solution.

Five days a week from May 20 to Aug. 8 in 1991, the U.S. Department of Agriculture sent biologists lunch buckets and shotguns in hand to resolve the gull problem "with extreme prejudice."

In 60 shooting days, the biologists killed 14,886 sea gulls at the airport, according to a federal report that found print last week. That's 248 gulls a day.

If you figure the teams of biologists worked two eight-hour shifts during the long summer periods of sunlight, this amounts to 15 gulls killed per hour, or one every four minutes.

That's more than happy hunting ... that's hard work.

Perhaps my point in all this has gotten lost in the muddy preface.

You might think that I'm trying to say the Palestinians aren't the only oppressed beings on the planet.

You might think that I'm trying to say laughing gulls have nothing to laugh about and are lousy at taking a hint.

You might think that I'm trying to say that between gulls flying and shotguns blasting, the skies over Long Island have never been more hazardous.

What I'm really trying to say, though, is that if we could get all federal employees to embrace their work with the zeal of those USDA biologists, this country would be a much more productive place.