Harbor Seal Gabby

When we went to the zoo this week, the weather was perfect and it being a weekday, the place wasn’t very crowded. This seemed to allow the animals to be more active and enjoyable to watch than normal. Probably the high point of our visit was with the harbor seals and sea lions. This is a relatively new exhibit that features an under-the-sea Plexiglas tunnel, where you can watch the seals as they swim over and around you. They frequently seem as interested in us as we are in them, except not so much this time. It wasn’t until we had exited the tunnel that I found out why, it was feeding time and all of the action was around the perimeter of the enclosure. There were four zookeepers, each handing out fish. Gabby, seen above is at attention and is waiting for her next fish, is a new addition to the pod. As swift and graceful as they are in the water, they are equally slow and clumsy on land. One of the other keepers decided to call Gabby over to him, enticing her with a nice and smelly mackerel. Her means of locomotion on land is best described as undulation. She doesn’t really use her flippers, but wiggles herself forward. All that writhing and probably the fresh mackerel too caused her to emit a rather audible fish fart. The crowd all laughed and the first keeper, who was still standing uncomfortably close to her was embarrassed by the incident and exclaimed, “It wasn’t me, it was her.” To which in true Le Marquis form, I shouted out, “Go ahead and blame it on the dog!”