Nonfiction by Michele L. Roest
“My Favorite Animal Is a Harbor Seal” was the first-place winner in nonfiction in the 2024 Golden Quill Writing Contest.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, my father, a vertebrate zoologist, taught at the nearby college. On Saturday mornings, I’d go to campus with him, sock-skating the freshly waxed floors in the biological sciences building.
I didn’t know what other kids did with their dads, nor did I know that what I did with my dad was unusual. Cleaning animal cages in the labs and responding to calls about wild animals were just part of the normal routine.
People called my dad when they found animals that were injured or had died. We had a big flight cage in our backyard, and when neighbors brought abandoned baby birds to him, he fed them up until they were old enough to fly on their own and released them into the fields behind our house. For animals that had died, he documented what species they were and tried to determine the cause of death. One time, it was a black bear that had been hit by a car, another time, a beautiful pearl-gray dolphin that had washed up on the beach. He kept a record of these findings in order to gather more information about the biodiversity of the central California coastal area where we lived. Once I was old enough to read and write, we’d go together into the field to document a dead animal. He’d hand me the clipboard, instructing me to write the measurements on the data sheet as he called them out.
It was Friday afternoon, the last day of spring break when I was in fourth grade. My dad was teaching, my mom had gone out somewhere, and my older sisters and I were at home. I’d already pestered them enough that they’d closed their doors and told me to go away. I’d read all the books we’d checked out of the library for that week and was aimlessly practicing cartwheels in the front yard when my dad drove up. It was too early for him to be home from work.
“I got a call about a seal on the beach. If you want, you can come along,” he said.
I ran to the car.
When we got to the harbormaster’s office, my dad identified himself and said someone there had reported a seal. A tall, straight-backed man in a harbor patrol uniform stood up and walked into another office. He walked out carrying what looked like a rolled-up beach towel. Walking right past my father, he dropped the bundle into my arms.
It was a live harbor seal pup, wrapped up in a wet, sandy towel. I looked into the pup’s liquid black eyes, and they looked back into mine.
“I thought you were reporting a dead seal,” Dad said.
A young couple walking the beach had heard the pup’s plaintive cries. They picked it up and delivered it to the harbormaster’s office. Now, I was holding this baby animal, so human-like that I felt a sense of déjà-vu, as if maybe it was a human baby, or maybe I was a seal. The two images, baby and seal, were juxtaposed, swimming in and out of my sight.
It was heavy, almost too heavy, and I didn’t trust myself to stand and hold such a precious living thing. What if I dropped it? I would be responsible—I couldn’t even allow the thought. I walked outside and sat on the concrete bench, cradling it in my arms. I couldn’t stop looking at the huge dark eyes, the silvery speckled fur, the pale whiskers. I could feel the chest rise and fall with every breath. A remnant of the umbilical cord remained, indicating a recent birth within the last couple of days.
I felt an ancient maternal instinct awaken inside of me. I had only one job—to keep this baby safe in my arms. I felt a deep connection to the mothers and big sisters I’d seen holding babies, feeling the same way I did in that moment.
Dad came out of the harbormaster’s office. I looked up at him. He looked down at me, and I felt that he, too, had an instinctual sense of his role. It was almost as if we had stopped being who we were and were simply two humans charged with protecting this innocent life entrusted to our care. The moment passed, unacknowledged.
“Your mother will kill me if I let all that sand get in the car,” he said. He went back into the harbormaster’s office and came out with a large cardboard box for bathroom tissue. He carried the box to the car and put it in the trunk, then took the pup from me and put it in the box. He closed the lid of the trunk. Feeling bereft, I wanted nothing more than to hold it again.
We had a strict dinner curfew at six o’clock. This was before cell phones, so Dad couldn’t call my mom and say, “I’ve got a live harbor seal pup in my car, do you want me to bring it home or take it to campus?” I brushed the sand off my clothes, and we drove home, hearing the pup’s loud cries in the trunk.
“Do you think it’s going to be okay?” I asked.
“It’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen to it.”
When we got home, Dad opened the trunk and told me to stay with the pup. He went into the house to tell my mother. She came out to have a look.
He picked up the box and brought it into the bathroom. He lifted the pup out and put it in the tub.
“Is it a male or a female?” I asked.
He said it was a male, he could feel the baculum—the penis bone that exists in some mammals, including harbor seals.
“Should we give him a nice warm bath to wash all the sand off?” I asked, thinking of what I would like.
“Cold water only. Think about how cold the ocean is.”
I turned the shower spray to cold. The little pup brightened at the feel of the water and swished around in the tub. He seemed to like it!
I could not control my fascination. I felt that he had been given to me, and I was happier than if I’d been given ten birthday presents. I told my mom I didn’t need to eat dinner, I would rather stay with the pup. She insisted that I leave the bathroom, put on clean, dry clothes, and join the rest of the family.
As soon as the bathroom door closed, the pup’s mournful cries echoed off the walls. I couldn’t wait to finish dinner so I could see him again.
“You can’t keep it here overnight,” I heard my mom say to my dad.
After dinner, Dad put the pup back in the box and drove it up to campus. I was not allowed to come—it was too close to my bedtime. What I didn’t realize at the time was that my parents were trying to prevent me from becoming attached to the pup. Too late for that, I was already deeply attached. There was nothing they could have done to prevent it.
The next day was Saturday. I went up to school with my dad. He had put the pup in one of the wire mesh cages outside the lab.
We looked into the cage. The pup looked at us. He seemed happy to see us! I was so happy to see him.
Dad wanted to be there for me when I learned what he knew would be an inevitable and painful lesson, that not all animals survive. But that particular Saturday morning wasn’t the day for me to learn that lesson. I wanted to hold the pup again, but my dad said no. He told me not to touch it for any reason—it was a wild animal.
Besides the obvious desire to protect me, his daughter, from the pain of attachment and inevitable loss, my dad also knew that the pup was at risk for imprinting, an instinctive behavior that happens when young animals form an attachment with the first moving thing they see. When a young animal imprints on a human, it can never go back to being with others of its own kind. My father knew that if the pup had any chance of survival, it must not imprint on a human.
“What are we going to feed him?” I asked. He looked at me with a blank face for what seemed like a long time, apparently struggling with some internal decision. Finally, he called his graduate student Claudia, who had studied animal husbandry and livestock care. She asked a friend who took classes in the dairy unit if we could borrow a bottle used for feeding newborn calves. When Claudia arrived, she picked up the pup and weighed him on the scale, then started a journal of everything she did and his responses. While her manner was clinical and unemotional, I was glad for Claudia’s involvement. Watching her hold him made it easier for me to remember what it felt like.
Dad called a local veterinarian and got a recipe. He bought sardines sold for fishing bait and heavy whipping cream, combining them in a blender like a milkshake. It wasn’t easy getting the concoction into the feeding bottle. It was messy, sticky, and stank like oily fish and spoiled milk. The pup wouldn’t take it at first, but eventually he tried a little. My hopes soared.
“Maybe he will live after all,” I said. “Do you think we can keep him if he lives?”
Dad shook his head. “If he lives, he’ll soon weigh two hundred pounds. We don’t have any place to put an animal that size.”
He made a call to Marineland of the Pacific and left a message asking them if they wanted the pup. He also had questions about what to feed it. But it was a Saturday, and he knew they wouldn’t get the message until Monday.
“Can we name him?” I asked.
“No, we won’t have him that long,” My enthusiasm was blocked at every turn. It stung, but he was in charge.
I went up to school with him on Sunday too, and Claudia was having some luck feeding the pup. As long as Claudia was there, I felt better. He was so sweet.
On Monday, I went to school. I had to wait until Dad came home from work to hear how the pup was. Still alive.
Marineland didn’t get the phone message until Monday afternoon. They called him back and told him to add specific vitamins to the pup’s milkshake. They offered to send a special nutrient-rich supplement, but the mail had already gone out. The package wouldn’t get in the mail until Tuesday, hopefully to arrive on Wednesday, maybe Thursday. When it arrived, Claudia injected the fluid directly under the skin with a hypodermic needle.
The pup made it all the way to the following Saturday morning. We entered the lab to find Claudia, tears streaming silently down her face, gently stroking the pup’s silvery fur. He looked asleep. She said he had died only a few minutes before we got there.
“You can touch him now,” Claudia said to me. “It’s okay for you to cry.”
I was stunned, uncertain of what had happened.
“Are you sure he’s dead?”
She said he had taken his last breath ten minutes before we got there. She showed me her entries in the journal she kept. It was all written down, spattered with grease-ringed patches of dried fish mash.
I felt numb, confused. I wasn’t allowed to touch or become attached to the seal, but now that he was dead, I was allowed to touch him and cry. My dad’s detachment toward the seal felt unnatural, and a part of me wondered if that was how he felt about me. Claudia’s warmth and care for the pup were reassuring, but I hadn’t been allowed to do what she did. The mixed messages and the confrontation with the dead pup had frozen me emotionally.
“I’m not supposed to cry,” I told her. I thought my dad would be proud of me, demonstrating the same detachment he did.
“It’s okay,” Claudia whispered, still weeping softly. “You can cry over this. You can cry all you want.”
This harbor seal pup died long before there were wild animal rescue programs. Harbor seals were rare then; the population was only beginning to recover after the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 banned the shooting of seals. The veterinarians in our town were mostly agricultural, accustomed to treating horses, cows, and sheep.
The well-meaning couple who took the pup from the beach had unwittingly sealed his fate. Harbor seal mothers must leave their pups on the beach while they go into the ocean to find food. This pup’s mother was most likely close to shore, eager to return. Sadly ironic, the very act the couple hoped would save his life was the cause of his demise.
Much has changed since then. Marine mammal rescue groups train volunteers to monitor beached marine mammals and prevent people from getting too close. Injured and sick animals are treated by specialized wild animal veterinarians. Animals that die are studied to learn more about their biology and physiology. Those that survive are marked with special tags, indicating their status as rehabilitated animals, and released back into the wild in the hopes they will be able to live out their natural lives, including having offspring, adding to the diversity of the gene pool. Survivors that can’t be released become animal ambassadors in zoos and nature centers, providing opportunities for people to see them up close and hear their stories of injury and recovery.
When I grew up, I became a vertebrate zoologist just like my dad. For my master’s degree in biology, I studied harbor seals (scientific name: Phoca vitulina). I sat on the cliffs looking through my binoculars at the harbor seal mothers with their pups on the beach, their spotted, silvery fur reflecting in the sunlight. Mother harbor seals take good care of their pups, who often head for the water right after they are born. The mother seal will place her body between the pup and the surf, protecting her little one from the impact of the waves. When the mother needs to swim away, her pup rides on her back, holding onto her shoulders with sharp claws. The only time a mother leaves her pup is when she needs to forage for food.
It may come as no surprise that my favorite animal is a harbor seal. Maybe it goes back to my childhood encounter with the little pup that landed in my arms on that spring day. Maybe I’ve been holding on to him ever since.
Michele Roest was born and raised in San Luis Obispo County. She has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in biology and an MFA in Creative Writing. A field biologist and science educator for more than twenty years, Michele currently teaches in the biology department at California Polytechnic State University. Once a year, she leads a California Naturalist class through Cuesta Community Education. Michele shares her lifelong love for California’s biodiversity and the Central Coast at every opportunity.