New Jersey teenager Kiley Holman was celebrating her best friend's birthday by riding the Slingshot at Morey's Piers and Beachfront Waterpark together. The theme park ride straps you into a rounded cage with two seats to be flung into the air at 75-miles-per-hour.
What Holman didn't expect was to get a face full of seagull as they ascended 44 feet into the air.
In their interview with FOX 29 Philadelphia, Holman said:
"I knew there was no going back, it was just going to hit me."
"I didn't know what to do, so I wait for [the ride] to spin over and then I just grabbed it and threw it off me quick."
Friend and birthday girl Georgia Reed was asked if she knew what was going on in that moment, she simply said, "Nope." All she was focused on was screaming her head off during this terrifying ride.
Reed's mother, Arena Reed, told Daily Mail she had no idea what had happened until the teens were off the ride:
'I saw the wings fall from the vehicle, but at first I thought they were tickets.'
Luckily, the girls had a laugh about it and no one was hurt.
This isn't the only instance of a rider colliding with a feathered friend. In Virginia's Busch Gardens, Fabio Lanzoni was celebrating the then-newest roller coaster, Apollo's Chariot, in 1999.
He came back at the end of the ride with a bloody nose. Unfortunately, Fabio collided with a goose resulting in him needing stitches and the goose meeting a gruesome fate.
Since this birdie ended up surviving the encounter, and no one got hurt, the jokes are fair game.
nature is healingpic.twitter.com/TfNKNMP7Uy— Rob N Roll (@Rob N Roll) 1626909790
I know the perfect lawyer. @RexChapmanpic.twitter.com/ivNQgKT5rL— Nola (@Nola) 1626910920
I represent Mr. JL Seagull who maintains that he was flying his normal daily commute when he was negligently struck by the humans I question. We will have our day in court!— Bob Ratz (@Bob Ratz) 1626981561
This is the start of a bird-flu horror movie— Brad Milner (@Brad Milner) 1626913112
The way she just removes the bird as she is being shot into the air Girl can deal with just about anything thrown or flown her way— Tracey Wiseheart (@Tracey Wiseheart) 1626949417
Bird's just like "Well. This is awkward.".— Some kind of Garf (@Some kind of Garf) 1626949066
Alternative headline: seagull gets hit by girl flying through the air. Stay tuned for more news about human aviation at 11.— philoslaver (@philoslaver) 1626963733
Fabio did it better— Genesis Wester (@Genesis Wester) 1626962547
Yoshi I/YouTube
Windsweptzariel/YouTube
Bhawki_101/YouTube
Michael/YouTube
Jon Smith/YouTube
Yamiles Hernandez/YouTube
When asked if the girls would ride again, they gave a sincere "hard no."