sort of slow for our busy season

So it's taken me a while to post. My chief excuse is that my seal week's been relatively slow. I know I could actually post about things other than my seals. (You'd like that wouldn't you?) And, in theory, if I'm not chasing seals, I should have more time for writing, right? Well, yeah, you might have a point there. But really, my life is boring without the seals. And besides, I've been spending all my spare (as in sober and awake) time preparing for the LSAT, which I take in less than six short weeks. I will say, though, I could have at least taken the time to clarify what a pie safe is (in response to my loyal readers' inquiries). In fact, I have found very few people outside my immediate family who have known what I am talking about. So I pulled this description off Lowe's website:

Before the advent of the ice box, when kitchen cabinets were still more of a luxury than a standard item, a pie safe was considered a prize possession. These unique cupboards were used to store baked goods, flour and other kitchen sundries. Their classic style and design still blends well with many modern kitchen settings. In recent years pie safes have moved out of the kitchen and found new lives as entertainment centers, armoires and linen cupboards.

While my pie safe will most certainly remain one of my prize possessions, it will never contain pies. I'm much more of a cake person myself, and besides, I have an entire kitchen for all that stuff. In fact, I haven't thought of what I will put in my pie safe. Very few things seem worthy of such hallowed ground. Nor has the pie safe been officially moved in. Though we've decided it absolutely must go in the main room next to the TV (so I can admire it often), we have not yet evicted the laundry chair/scratching post that stands in its place. So I walk around the pie safe, risking stubbed toes, and I'm not even annoyed. This tells you how much I love my pie safe.

But you know, all too well I'm sure, that I also love my seals. And so here's this week's synopsis.

We begin with the sloppy seconds I shipped off on Sunday morning. Fiscalini was a late season elephant seal suffering from otostrongylis (that evil lungworm which is so often deadly, as it hasn't yet acclimated to this new host). It's been a while since we've had an elephant seal on site (the last oto victim died within hours) so we were all a bit rusty. The morning tube feeding went, shall we say?, less than perfectly. But we got the job done, and that's what matters. The only thing I regret is that I foolishly did not put on play pants. Thus I ended up staining my jeans with runny dark feces as I stabilized his hind end to give him an injection. Delightful. And I do know for certain that Fiscalini is a "he" as I accidentally stuck my finger in his "oopsie hole" while loading him up. I see now that it really does make you say "oopsie" as your finger beats a hasty retreat out of the penis keeper. Hope I didn't give him a urinary tract infection. At least he's already on antibiotics...

Then all was quiet until Tuesday. I wasn't officially on schedule, but I wasn't altogether surprised when I got a call from one of my favorite rescue friends inviting me to check on a long shot on Morro Rock. I wore long sleeves despite the heat (the last of my previous poison oak is finally gone) and hurried down to meet her. (Sadly, I think I did get some new poison oak on this trip. It's just beginning to drive me crazy today...) We ended up finding our seal by accident (she'd just hauled out on a different rock, much closer to the parking lot than the rock we were headed towards) but we knew it was our girl as her wounds were painfully obvious (and obviously painful). We took this photo of the damage (shark bite, big shark bite) when we thought we couldn't access her.

You can see from this picture that her rock (the farthest one out) was completely surrounded by ocean (shark filled ocean, at that). Still, because a determined seagull was attempting to snack on her, we worked our way closer to her position (down a steep rock, and across a bunch of wet ones), hoping to scare off the bird and maybe even the seal, figuring she might pick a different rock.

To our surprise, she let us get very, very close to her. We'd successfully spooked the gull and weren't terribly spooked ourselves. Since we were already wet (me to my knees, my friend to her crotch), we decided to give the net a swing. Filet didn't put up much fight. Only the elements made the rescue challenging. My net got hung up on rocks, the tide was rising, and we still had that steep slope to traverse. We finally got the seal to this position and called in reinforcements. A handful of people showed up (three of them from the Coast Guard) and helped us get her out of the ocean and into a carrier.

I was pretty surprised and a little encouraged when vet staff didn't euthanize her right away. Filet's wounds, though dramatic, could have been somewhat superficial. So instead we gave her the good drugs to the control the pain and crossed our fingers. She ended up dying overnight, so now we're all wishing we'd put her out of her misery, but at least I know we saved her from the bird. And again, for the record, when and if I must die, I'd like to do so on the good drugs...

Wednesday brought more action. No surprise there, as Wednesdays are notoriously (if not mysteriously) busy. The day began with a 9 am wake up call for a seizing sea lion in Avila. I guess because it was a second hand report, we did not think to bring drugs to the beach. Big mistake as we helplessly watched Nashville seizing in the net. We let our staff person net him (her first time) as he was lethargic and there was plenty of beach for whiffing once or twice. She got him on her first try anyway. Then we called in the Harbor Patrol guys to drive on and help us get our animal off the very long beach. I don't know if you can see it, but there's a tiny hole in his head (above his eye) that we're waiting to hear back about. It's just perfect enough to be man made, if you know what I mean. Even if he isn't a victim of foul play, we learned he was on the beach (seizing) all night. So that's not a good thing.

Anyway, on the way back from Avila, we got a call for a seal on my home turf in Morro Bay. I went down to check it out with another girl (while the others offloaded Nashville) and we scooped up Knoxville here. He was pretty easy to catch as he has a swollen shoulder and didn't feel like moving. We got our feet wet just in case (to be in the best position to respond to his potential mad dash to freedom) and again we got a lot of help from the public getting him off the beach and into the truck. I haven't gotten an update from vet staff (they just received him today) but broken parts (especially front flippers) are not generally a good thing. So I am rooting for abscess. But even that indicates a pretty massive infection.

So it looks like I'm mostly likely 0 for 3 in my seal week. At least I learned that BonusFred has been successfully disentangled and promptly released. And Propeller made it through despite his ghastly wound. And Falafel lost an eye but is still in the land (or sea?) of the living. So they're not all sad stories. But sea lions sure do have a knack for finding trouble...