Day One: On May 2, my first day back in Cherry Grove for the season, the highlight of my first walk on the beach quickly became, as with so many relationships, the season’s first drama.
Relishing the mild weather, I set out for an afternoon constitutional, for exercise, but also in search of beach glass. What I found was so much better, or so it seemed at first. Walking east from Main Walk, I encountered, near the ocean, near Aeon Walk, the first seal I had ever seen for myself, on Fire Island, although I’d seen pictures that others posted here, the first seal or sea lion I’d ever seen in the wild, first outside of a zoo or aquarium, on the East Coast—discounting here, then, the California sea lions on Pier 39 in San Francisco, whose space friends and I once invaded in a small boat, much to the pinnipeds’ displeasure, loudly expressed.
The small seal of Cherry Grove and I communed peacefully and it was a wondrous experience. The seal moved around a bit, rolled over, waddled up the beach, toward the houses rather than toward the water, very much alive. I shared the experience of finding the seal with an ex-police officer-with-German shepherd and summoned my spouse to the beach to share the find.
The experience quickly changed, as a small crowd of about half-a-dozen gathered. My spouse, who has had nursing training, pronounced the animal distressed and pointed out a wound near its face. The ex-cop, who had originally taken a view as naïve, perhaps, as mine, that the seal was just basking in the sun, like any beachgoer, “chilling,” he said, came to agree, the more he looked at it, that it was indeed in distress. An artist departed and returned with a camera. Two women opined that the seal was in labor. Or could it have been a young pup that had gotten separated from its own mother?
We called 911 several times and operators, who seemed to appreciate the urgency that the seal might be in distress, said that they would contact authorities who would arrive presently. We called an animal rescue phone number and got voicemail. We waited for about two hours—no-one with authority or medical knowledge came or called back—until, chilled by the wind, we departed. I looked around, in vain, for a Fire Island National Seashore ranger. I tried an office number for a bona fide veterinarian and got a machine.
Was no-one really home at any of the numbers that we and the 911 operators tried? Did the apparent lack of response represent callousness or a not unreasonable decision to let Nature take its course?
When we were a crowd, the seal bared its teeth at us several times, which it had not done when the seal and I were alone, but it never uttered a sound. Were we responsible for increasing its distress?
Day Two: The next afternoon, I encountered the seal again, not exactly in the same place as on the previous day, but instead between Greene Walk and Aeon. The seal was very still and I feared the worst. When I approached, however, it opened its eyes, then ran a flipper over its face. It was, once again, a peaceful experience more than a disturbing one. The tide was getting higher, though, with the water approaching where the seal was lying. Whether animal rescue came or not would soon be a moot point.
I went to the office of our local animal welfare expert and spoke to one of her colleagues, who assured me that not only did she know about the seal, but so also did many others, that people had been posting photos and items about the seal and, yes, no authorities seemed to be taking action, and we wondered whether that was appropriate or not.
I later found a voicemail message from the Suffolk County Police on my cell phone, saying that their Marine Bureau had checked on the seal and determined that “it was sunning itself—it’s something they do.”
Day Three: I set out for the beach again, on the afternoon of the third day, wondering what I would find. The ending of the story is as inconclusive as most of the rest of it. There was, much to my relief, no sign at all of the seal. Had the sea reclaimed it, then—and, if so, was this a happy ending?