I n her fourth-floor apartment in central Rome, Emanuela Tripi wakes at dawn to the terrifying sounds of a home invasion. She creeps into her kitchen and spots the culprit – long white neck, red-rimmed eyes, yellow-webbed feet – stabbing its beak into a rubbish bag.

Growing up in Sicily, Tripi always had a romantic vision of seagulls, but now she is face to face with a predator that is aggressively colonising a city a good 20 miles from the sea. She throws a slipper. It ignores her. She lifts a second slipper. It caws violently, takes flight and charges.