Seal rescue!

[andygates]

It's not every day you go for a stroll and find a baby seal up a tower. I'd suspect it of being a Scots thing, like cold swimming pools and haggis-and-chips (yum!), but the presence of a perplexingly perched pinniped baffled ravenbait as much as it did me. RB has a fantastic telling of the tale over on her blog, but hey, this is the noughties: we've got video.

Behold the majesty and fluffy grumpiness that is Morris the Seal:

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Gosh, well done.

Do you reckon someone put the pup there?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That's most likely, otherwise that seal would have to be preposterously intrepid. And I don't recall the juvenile grey seal being famous for its climbing skills ;)

[skean.livejournal.com]

He was obviously a junkie looking for a quiet spot to skin up. Or harpoon up.

Sounds like a drunken student job to me.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

No. Kirkcaldy is not the place for drunken student jobs. It's not that sort of a town. More likely to be kids. Or...

I don't know. He wasn't exactly co-operative.

[skean.livejournal.com]

Sounds like somebody was upsetting him. I kind of liked the idea of a drunken student job. The other things people might take a seal into a deserted tower, behind several fences, a long way from anywhere for don't lead to very happy thoughts.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I don't think he'd been there for very long. He was far too feisty. I think we got to him in time.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

"Our bestest special secret pet" is about the best interpretation, and that leads me to memories of keeping a spider in a jar when I was about six. And that died.

But you saw the fight he put up. There's no way - unless maybe he was unconscious, but there were no wounds on him - that kids could have got a grumpy seal up there unassisted.

T'is a Fortean Phenomenon, and no mistake.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Lovingly spliced, dear boy. Well done!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It was the least I could do - you and the SSPCA man did the actual rescuing, after all. And he was a feisty little bugger when he got going!

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

And don't forget your new hellboy avatar!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

This one? :)

"C'mon kid. Let's go fight some seal-baiters."

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Do you think there is such a thing as seal-baiting?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Gods, I hope not. But random viciousness abounds.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

What? Honestly, you have the weirdest life of anyone I know.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Actually, I suspect in this instance he was contaminated by the weridness of mine.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Would it have been weird if nobody had spotted Morris, though? Granted, a bleachy seal skeleton would have been pleasingly Fortean (and given you some primo tat for the flat) but a live one's more so because the coincidence is richer.

Maybe you should write to FT?

Morris gave me an American Psycho moment: that movie's obsession with windows, and the idea that behind every single one of the hundreds of them could be another comically-psychotic wack-job. Now I can't think of little derelict bits of industrial architecture without expecting prestidigitated pinnipeds or Rasputin's head in a jar or something.

Yay. The world was being a bit too rational anyway :)

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I think the washed up onto the pier and then climbed option is worth considering. They do climb rocks and the steps weren't that much of an obstacle. It was just motivationally weird, and, well, I can cope with a seal pup that has a bizarre penchant for enclosed spaces more than I can cope with the idea of a bunch of 8 year olds manhandling that wee bugger up there.

It's blowing a gale out there today. I'll keep an eye out...

[andygates.livejournal.com]

We have to beat the basking shark that that old chap in the flour mill mentioned. Commune with the creatures of the sea, dammit, get a cephalopod!

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, what do you use to edit video?

Oh, and good job obviously :)

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Windows Movie Maker - it came with XP.

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

Oh cool. I've seen the icon, but never played around with it - I think I assumed it didn't do very much, but it clearly does enough to be fun.

Anybody else know of cheap or free video editing software that would allow you to reproduce, say, Blade Runner in a couple of afternoons?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Hm. Movie project eats time, a couple of afternoons sounds wildly optimistic! But I'd love to see the Voigt-Kampf test scene done :)

Seals in strange places

[arabis.livejournal.com]

Wonder if Morris is related to Sid?

Re: Seals in strange places

[andygates.livejournal.com]

This is worrying me. Two seals apporting on the same weekend? It's a sign of the end of the world "And I beheld the second seal..." and all that Revelations stuff.

Crikey! Morris is War and Sid is Pestilence. Two more for Famine and Death. Any takers?

I so need to turn this into Seals of the Apocalypse pun graffiti.

Re: Seals in strange places

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

This would not be the moment to point out that several of our dear and entirely sane old friends in Bristol have apparently been referring to me for some time as 'The Adversary', would it?

Re: Seals in strange places

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Taking over the world by means of pinnipeds?

You've changed your modus operandi, you devious bugger...