Tuesday, March 03, 2009

The Harbor Seal & Me

We had a cute little visitor at the beach about 2 miles from my house last week. A Western Atlantic Harbor Seal.



The li'l fella is about 5 feet long and obviously healthy. He was snoozing for the first 15 minutes after I got there, but then he started lazily rolling around, chewing on shells, and then he put his nose in the water, trying to eat snails. Every so often he'd cast a glance at the big funny animals who walked around nearby on their hind legs, but mostly he ignored us.

The crowd kept back at least 20 feet or so, having been notified that the seal is a Federally-protected species and it's against the law to interact with him. Plus, he's got a mouth full of canine teeth that I bet would easily snap your fingers off.

I called Joyce and told her about him, and she almost went crazy with jealousy because she was stuck in work. She loves sea animals, so hopefully the cute fella will still be there when she gets out later today.

UPDATE: Joyce called a couple hours later and said she was able to get to the beach after lunch and she saw the little beast. She's very happy now. And the seal apparently is happy too, because he left the beach about an hour later to continue his migration.

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