VICTORIA — A Nova Scotia man banned from Victoria's stately Fairmont Empress hotel is welcome back after apologizing for an incident more than 17 years ago in which seagulls hungry for pepperoni trashed his room in a frenzy. 
 
 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. 
 
 "I remember walking down the long hall and opening the door to my room to find an entire flock of seagulls in my room,'' stated Burchill's letter. "I didn't have time to count, but there must have been 40 of them and they had been in my room, eating pepperoni for a long time.'' 
 
 He said he startled the gorging birds, which is when things really got out of control. 
 
 "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 result was a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers, pepperoni chunks and fairly large birds whipping around the room.'' 
 
 Tracey Drake, the hotel's public relations director, said Monday there were thoughts this was an April Fools' Day prank, but a check of the records and Burchill's appearance at the front desk last weekend confirmed the seagull story and the former guest's permanent ban. 
 
 "It is absolutely a true story,'' she said. 
 
 'The room was trashed' 
 
 Burchill was in Victoria for a conference and was booked to stay at the Empress back in 2001, said Drake. After the room fiasco, he was moved to another room for the rest of his stay. 
 
 "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. "He's correct. The lamps were broken. The room was trashed. 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.'' 
 
 Burchill's letter stated he still remembers the dismayed look on the housekeeper's face when she walked into his room. 
 
 "I have matured and I admit responsibility for my actions,'' the letter stated. "I come to you, hat in hand, to apologize for the damage I had indirectly come to cause and to ask you reconsider my lifetime ban from the property.'' 
 
 The Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria has graciously forgiven a guest who years ago destroyed a room by luring a flock of seagulls through an open window with pepperoni. 
 
 Burchill could not be immediately reached for comment. 
 
 The letter he sent to the Empress and posted on Facebook explained how his plan to bring spicy Nova Scotia pepperoni to Victoria to share with friends stationed at the West Coast naval base went astray when he decided to cool the meat near the window because his room didn't have a fridge. 
 
 Drake said the damage to the room was beyond description, but all is forgiven and Burchill is back on the guest list. 
 
 The seagulls and pepperoni flap isn't the only wild animal story to occur at the Empress. 
 
 Almost two years ago, thieves stole an iconic Bengal tiger skin that was mounted on the wall of the hotel's Bengal Lounge. The theft remains unsolved. 
 
 In 1992, a cougar was spotted on the hotel grounds, where it was later tranquilized in its underground parking lot. 
 
 CORRECTION: A previous headline on this article referred to the "Fairmont Express" hotel. The hotel is called Fairmont Empress. 
 
 Also On HuffPost: ||||| The Fairmont Empress in Victoria has lifted its ban against Nick Burchill — 17 years after dozens of seagulls trashed the Dartmouth, N.S., man's hotel room while feasting on enough pepperoni to fill his suitcase. 
 
 "I didn't like the feeling of being banned from somewhere," Burchill said. "So when I was out there last week for a different conference, I thought that I would approach The Empress and see if I could officially get my record cleared." 
 
 Burchill's story began with good intentions. He was taking a small suitcase full of Brothers Pepperoni — a widely requested Halifax delicacy — to some of his navy friends in the B.C. capital. 
 
 April 2018: Nick Burchill tells us about the time dozens of seagulls trashed his hotel room while feasting on enough pepperoni to fill his suitcase, resulting in a 17-year ban from the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, B.C. 6:44 
 
 "It was a long flight, that time of the year where everyone travels, so the bag got lost, misplaced for a period of time," said Burchill, who wrote a widely shared Facebook post about the ordeal. 
 
 When the pepperoni finally arrived at the hotel, Burchill said he worried it would get warm because there was no fridge, so he laid the food out on a table near the window ledge and the chilly April air. 
 
 "And that's when things kind of went bad," said Burchill. 
 
 'The seagulls were flying everywhere' 
 
 Burchill left the room for a few hours to take a walk. He returned to a room full of seagulls. 
 
 "I don't mean just a couple of seagulls. I can only estimate how many there were," he said. "I'm thinking somewhere between 30 and 40 seagulls had come in through this open window while I was gone. 
 
 "And I would have never thought of that because the East Coast seagulls aren't that brazen. They'd never come into a room or do that sort of thing — at least I don't think they would." 
 
 The Empress's marketing manager confirmed to CBC News on Sunday that Burchill is no longer banned from staying at the hotel. (fairmont.com) 
 
 The seagulls were startled when Burchill opened the door. He said many tried to leave through the small opening all at once. 
 
 "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. It was a real mess." 
 
 Shoe, towel tossed out window 
 
 Complicating matters was the fact Burchill had just started his job three months earlier. His employer had booked the hotel and he needed to attend a dinner with customers. There were two seagulls left in the room and he had to get them out. 
 
 I was kind of losing my temper at this point. - Nick Burchill 
 
 "One was just bouncing around on the windowsill and I was kind of losing my temper at this point, so I took off one of my shoes and I threw it in the direction of the seagull, and both the seagull and the shoe went out the window," he said. 
 
 "The last seagull, it was running around the room and this is a fairly large room, nice room — or it was. And I was chasing this seagull around. It had a big piece of pepperoni in its mouth and I could not get it to leave." 
 
 Burchill said he ended up grabbing a towel from the washroom and he jumped the seagull, wrapped it in a towel and threw it out the window. He said the seagull was shaken but wasn't hurt. 
 
 While everything was happening in his room, Burchill said there was a line of tourists out in front of the hotel and they witnessed both his shoe and the seagull wrapped in a towel falling from his room. 
 
 Horrified hotel cleaner 
 
 "I guess that made an impression on some people. It wasn't very smooth," said Burchill. 
 
 Burchill had to go downstairs to get the shoe and towel. He went back up into the room, where the smell of the birds and pepperoni was becoming more apparent. 
 
 But he had to get to the dinner with customers, so he started to clean his shoe, which had fallen into some mud. 
 
 Fairmont Empress front desk staff members were in stitches when Burchill explained why he had been banned from the hotel. (Submitted by Nick Burchill) 
 
 As he was drying the shoe with the hairdryer, the power went out in his room. At that point, Burchill said he "realized I was way in over my head with this mess" and called the front desk for help. 
 
 "They sent this poor lady up and I still remember the look on her face when she opened the door. 
 
 "She had her cleaning kit with her and it was quite clear that the kit that she had with her was not going to cover the damage and the mess that was in that 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. 
 
 It was a decision Burchill said he respected and understood. But he wanted to make amends, which led him back to the hotel last week. He asked to speak with the staff member who dealt with him the last time, but was told she was no longer an employee. 
 
 "When I was talking to the people at the desk and the manager, they did say that they had heard this story from a long-term employee that works there. I was just kind of in and out. I didn't want to overstay my welcome. 
 
 "I just apologized. I was forgiven. I left them a present of about a pound of Brothers TNT Pepperoni as a peace offering." 
 
 Jeremy Heryet, marketing manager at The Empress, confirmed to CBC News by email Sunday that the ban against Burchill has been lifted. 
 
 Burchill said staff encouraged him to book a room at the hotel the next time he's in town. 
 
 "I've made friends with one of the managers there and he's made it quite clear that I'm encouraged to stay with them. They'll be disappointed if I don't."
– 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?)