Flip me! It’s a seal on the tarmac
Resident panics after waking up to find his house surrounded by police — but it was only a ‘mammal hazard’
Two loose seals caused excitement in different parts of the North Island yesterday. In South Auckland, the saga began in the morning when a large seal was spotted in Papakura by a man on his way to work.
Michael Saxon, who saw the mammal in the middle of Coles Cres, said: “It was kind of just plodding along the road. A few motorists were pulling over and freaking out.”
He said the seal was enormous and “definitely the weirdest thing I’ve seen on the way to work”.
Katrina Ward was on her way to university with a friend when she spotted the seal. “It was quite relaxed just sitting in the park,” she said.
“It must have been there for quite a while, as the tide goes out in the early hours of the morning.”
Firefighters and police were called to the scene, with the call-out coded as a “mammal hazard”.
The seal camped out for several hours on the driveway of Papakura man Danny Yong, who initially pan- icked when he woke to find his house surrounded by police and firefighters.
“I thought I’d got myself into trouble somehow. Then my flatmates went outside and saw a seal in the driveway,” he said.
“It was very, very cool. We were trapped in the house for about three hours while police tried to move it.
“It was just relaxing, doing nothing in the driveway. It was lying down in front of my door.”
Using a makeshift enclosure made out of plywood, emergency services staff managed to coax the seal out of the driveway and down to the estuary opposite Mr Yong’s house. Residents were advised to stay indoors until the seal has been caught.
The “mammal hazard” even got its own Twitter feed — the parody account @PapakuraSeal.
“Just a fish out of water — well, technically a mammal, but you get the drift,” the seal’s profile said.
Its last tweet after being returned to the water asked the public to remember the seal “as the adventurer and pioneer who faced all odds to bring you amusement on a Monday”.
HWatch video of the rogue seal's capture here: tinyurl.com/
looseseal
The misplaced seal even spurned a copycat down the line, with another washing up in Lower Hutt.
The second seal was spotted in the suburb of Waiwhetu, after it made its way up the Waiwhetu stream and past the old Griffin’s factory.
The Department of Conservation warned that all seals should be treated with caution. “Although very charismatic, they are wild animals and should be treated with respect.
‘‘In general seals and sea lions should be enjoyed from a distance without interference.”