Jenn Ross heard a barking sound as she was leaving her house to go to the gym one morning last week, but it wasn't until she got home that she realized the barking was not coming from a neighbor's dog as she initially thought, but from a seal that had snuck into her house.
When she got home from the gym, she opened the door to find an adolescent New Zealand fur seal, which had apparently entered through their cat door and had been chilling in their house for several hours.
Jenn said the seal was frightened when she came in and humped its way down the hall and into a spare room.
I imagine it looked something like this:
At least I hope it did.
The family's cat, Coco, decided to move into their neighbor's house during the ordeal, so the family suspect that it had an unpleasant encounter with the visitor.
Jenn's husband Phil Ross, a marine biologist, told Fox 9,
"I haven't heard of seals going through cat flaps before, but I blame our cat, Coco. Coco is fairly territorial and tends to have a go at dogs. I imagine she took a swipe at the seal, which didn't back down, and then proceeded to chase her up the side of the house and through two cat flaps, into the garage then into the downstairs part of our house. Coco hid at the neighbor's house and wouldn't come home until the seal was gone. Then for the next day, she wouldn't go downstairs where the seal was. We didn't see the seal/cat interaction, but it was clearly something that Coco didn't enjoy,"
Personally, I would have kept the seal, and left the cat at the neighbor's house. At least then I could have relived one of my favorite childhood movies, Andre.
Thankfully, Jenn was quickly able to guide the young seal back outside, where a ranger then relocated it back to its home at a nearby estuary.
Phil said,
"It is really common for young seals to end up on unusual bits of coastline at this time of year. The young ones are starting to get weaned, going out on their own, and like most teenagers, can make bad decisions about where they end up."
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