But officer, the thief had webbed feet

The RC McColl newsagents have a regular shoplifter these days and he has been identified. Sam slips in regularly and makes off with a bag of cheese Doritos. In fact, he is such a popular thief, that other customers are paying for what he does manage to steal.

"He's got it down to a fine art. He waits until there are no customers around and I'm standing behind the till, then he raids the place," shop assisant Sriaram Nagarajan said.

Sam, the seagull, first showed up in Aberdeen Scotland earlier in July and now is a regular. He has become somewhat of a celebrity and he isn't a selfish bird either, he takes his purloined bag outside the shop, rips it open and shares with the other birds that are around.

A spokesman for the RSPB Scotland has said that he had never heard of anything like this before and maybe it was the first opportunities to see what was in the shiney bags that fostered his love for them. He did caution that gulls can be quick and fearless and that they shouldn't feed them. It would seem that Sam also heard that warning..... since he has taken to feeding himself.