Fabio has enjoyed 22 years of being the internet’s favorite example of what it looks like when a bird collides with a human face that’s speeding through the air on a rollercoaster. Now, however, his position has been usurped by a 13-year-old who managed to improve on his feat by both smashing into a seagull on a ride and tossing it away so that neither she nor the bird had to die for our amusement.
As shown in the above video and described in a NJ.com article marking this momentous occasion, the teen was just trying to enjoy a day out at Morey’s Pier in New Jersey when she had to quite literally face the unexpected threat of a passing seagull. Just after the ride throws her into the air, a bird smacks into her face, giving us a moment where we see her rapidly dealing with the double shock of a face filled with feathers and being on a rollercoaster. (The amusement park’s SpringShot, which she was riding with a friend, “launches riders at more than 75 mph” in case you were wondering).
The teenager somehow manages to have the wherewithal to grab the seagull stuck to her face and toss it away. Her friend, clearly screaming, “Holy fucking shit!” as the ride starts, doesn’t notice a thing.
Speaking to press, the girl said she “waited until we spun over and then I quickly took [the bird] off me.” She says she “didn’t know if it was going to hurt me,” but that it “just flew away.” The seagull seems to have lived to fly into high velocity objects another day and the teen walked away with nothing more than “a little tiny cut.”
If there’s anything to take away from this experience, it’s probably that we should just stick to enjoying backyard-built or VR-only rollercoasters until an arrangement’s been reached with the birds that guarantees this doesn’t keep happening. Or not! It is, after all, very funny to watch when it isn’t your face involved.
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