The harp seal at Susan Labandibar

The harp seal

A flipper waving in the sand. That’s how the thin little harbor seal caught my attention as we jogged along Carson Beach this morning. There were already a few people standing guard over him, including a park ranger. So we kept jogging, figuring he was in good hands.Later, I came back dressed for the cold carrying a thermos of tea and a couple of plastic cups, in case anyone else wanted some. I sat on the boardwalk for an hour and a half, watching the seal and talking to the animal control officer. The seal had been there for almost three days. The aquarium had been out to check on him a few times. He had been eating pebbles. They were getting together a rescue team.

It was pretty busy at the beach. People kept coming up with their cameras and trying to take pictures of the seal. One woman positioned her daughter behind the seal, trying to get that perfect child/seal photo. �

Finally the park ranger and the animal control officer cordoned off an area around the seal. I asked the animal control officer if he loved animals. He said he did. He said the biggest problem with the job was that, after a while, it became hard to like the people. You know, the people who beat their dogs, or the people who make you find feral cats and euthanize them in case they had rabies, or the ones who yell at you when you ask them to leash their dogs while you are trying to protect a seal on the beach.

I was just getting ready to leave when the marine mammal rescue team showed up. The team had a reassuring air about them. This was no rag-tag bunch of volunteers. Everyone had a professionally lettered jacket with “Marine Mammal Rescue Team” printed on the back. The van looked just like an ambulance. Everything was brand-new. They told the animal control officer that they were going to take the seal up to University of New England in Maine because they didn’t have enough room at the Aquarium.

They carried a large dog-crate and a towel out to the seal. The poor seal, who was way too skinny, didn’t even put up a fight. They carried the dog-crate back to the van with the seal bumping around inside. Of course my emotions got the better of me, and I left the beach with tears rolling down my cheeks. Later, when I got back to the apartment and was warming up with a cup of tea, I kept thinking about the seal bumping around in the crate on his way up to Maine.

We are hanging around trying to protect one seal while hundreds of thousands of baby harp seals will soon be slaughtered in Canada.