Nick Burchill of Dartmouth, N.S., says in a letter to the hotel he was young and immature in 2001 and unaware of the aggressive nature of West Coast seagulls, especially when tempted with a suitcase full of fresh pepperoni near an open window. It's a really funny story to tell 17 years later, but I was sitting here thinking about the housekeeper and what her first reaction must have been when she opened that door.'' "They immediately started flying around and crashing into things as they desperately tried to leave the room through the small opening by which they had entered,'' said Burchill. "The seagulls were flying everywhere and they had been there for a long time eating Brothers TNT Pepperoni, so you can imagine what the room looked like even before I came back. And now we've got seagulls flying around, the curtains are falling down, the lamps are falling down. "The hotel followed up with his employer afterwards, saying he's not welcome back at the hotel due to the damage in the room,'' Drake said. "The result was a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers, pepperoni chunks and fairly large birds whipping around the room.'' Fairmont Empress front desk staff members were in stitches when Burchill explained why he had been banned from the hotel. Burchill's letter stated he still remembers the dismayed look on the housekeeper's face when she walked into his room. Making amends with pepperoni 
 
 Hotel staff moved Burchill to another room for the rest of his stay. Burchill said hotel staff were nice about the whole thing, but a letter was sent to his employer telling them he would no longer be allowed to stay at The Empress. Drake said the damage to the room was beyond description, but all is forgiven and Burchill is back on the guest list.
– A Canadian man barred from a British Columbia hotel for 17 years has successfully reversed his lifetime ban with "a pound of Brothers TNT Pepperoni as a peace offering." To understand the significance of that gift, it's necessary to know the truly insane story of how Nick Burchill got banned in the first place. It seems the Nova Scotia native brought a suitcase filled with Halifax's coveted Brothers TNT Pepperoni to Victoria's Fairmont Empress hotel during a business trip in April 2001. He'd planned to share the meat with his BC friends, per the CBC. But as there was no fridge in his room, Burchill put the pepperoni next to an open window to be cooled by the breeze and left. Returning hours later, he tells the Times Colonist he found "a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers, pepperoni chunks, and fairly large birds whipping around the room." Burchill says he eventually chased 30 to 40 seagulls out of the fourth-floor window, dropping a towel and his shoe in the process. After retrieving the shoe, he tried to dry it with a hairdryer, which fell into a sink of water, knocking out power, per the Times Colonist. That's when he contacted hotel staff, who sent a woman to the room to clean. "I still remember the look on her face when she opened the door," Burchill tells the CBC. He wasn't surprised when his employer later received a letter saying he wasn't allowed to return to the hotel. But "I didn't like the feeling of being banned from somewhere," says Burchill. During a trip back to Victoria over Easter weekend, therefore, "I just apologized. I was forgiven," he says. A hotel rep backs up Burchill's story, per HuffPost. "It's a really funny story to tell 17 years later," she says. (Dude, what's up with Canada's birds?)