For 3 days I've been watching a sea lion pup on the beach. On Sunday morning I looked up as there was a large group of people gathered around something and I realized there was a sea lion pup on the beach. For those of you that don't know, mother sea lions will leave their pups on shore for up to 24 hours, so that they can continue to feed and their pups can rest... Unfortunately this is a bad beach for it, as well meaning people keep coming along and feeling the need to rescue them. Each year the Fish & Wildlife department, does public service campaigns in the Newspaper, on the Radio, on tv and on signs, and yet people still seem to be unaware that you NEED to leave these animals alone. Once touched the mothers won't come back for them... Well about noon on sunday some well meaning idiot picked it up and put it back in the Ocean, this does two things, one it's mother won't come back, 2 it may drown... I suppose 2 doesn't matter as it was destined to die once this guy picked it up.....
Apparently enough of the locals called Fish and Wildlife that they came out and placed signs around the pup saying leave it alone but this was on Monday 24 hours after it had been touched. Well this is day 3 it's mother isn't back, it has signs around it, and this morning I saw that it had waddled about 50 feet towards the surf, which was gently washing over it, and I'm sitting here thinking sheesh maybe it heard mom, maybe it's going to survive, when out of nowhere here comes one of my neighbors who walks right past the sign, picks it up, and starts carrying it back up into the dry sand... "What was she thinking????????? she's lived here more years than I have" She scurried away when other people started pointing at the signs and shrieking at her!
Apparently well meaning people never got the class in grade school that explained that you should never touch a baby wild animal as their mothers won't come back for them and I have no idea why I'm writing this as the same people that wouldn't leave this poor pup alone won't take the time to read this either, since they clearly walked past previous signs.
Meanwhile the rest of us get to watch this poor critter die a really slow death! Rant fishished - moral nature is not always pleasant.
