Why did the seal try to cross the road?

Was it because he wanted to get to the other side?

Nope, this is not a joke. We've been reading more and more about seals leaving the sea and wandering our local streets. So much so that one of Strand's dive centres has set up a call centre should locals discover seals in their backstreets (or gardens... or shopping malls!).

This weekend, the first of our winter storms hit the Cape and boy, did it arrive with a vengeance! On Saturday morning, we took a drive to check out the waves. On our travels, we passed a police car pulled up on the pavement and, being the nosey people we are, slowed down to check out what was happening. And there, about to cross the road at the pedestrian crossing was a baby Cape Fur Seal. We jumped out to see if we could do anything to help.

The policeman was on the phone to the NSRI, asking them to come and put the seal back in the water (poor thing - I wouldn't want to be in that washing machine either).

Two passers-by, however, decided to do their good deed for the day. One donned thick rubber gloves that he'd grabbed from his car (he was a plumber) and the other held a hessian bag, ready to put the seal inside if necessary (very gallant).

Rubber Gloves picked up the seal as if it were a kitten and walked down the path to the beach. After about 100m of behaving itself, the seal suddenly lashed out at Rubber Gloves's face. He promptly put the seal down on the grass. Seal then decided to go for Rubber Gloves' leg and had a tug of war with his jeans. Quite funny really, despite the torrents of rain that were now falling...

After a while, seal was again picked up, run down the path by Rubber Gloves and plonked unceremoniously on the beach, where he hopped down to the water and swam out to sea.

This was the smallest seal I have ever seen and can just say that thank goodness it hadn't been a bigger one! We might have needed the NSRI after all!

But where had he been going?