He showed up uninvited at doors, slept on the street and prompted calls to the police. But residents of a coastal region in southern Tasmania, Australia, are not usually forgiving of their interloper — after all, he’s a seal.
The more than 1,300-pound southern elephant seal, affectionately named Neil (the Seal) by locals, appears to have caught the attention of the Australian public last year when he slipped into a seaside neighborhood near Hobart, the capital of the island state of Tasmania, where he rolling through traffic cones and drenched in the sun.
Then, last month, Neil decided that take a nap in front of a woman’s car, thwarting her plans to leave home. “I think it will go down in the books as the best excuse in history not to go to work,” the woman said said at the time. Since then Neil has gained worldwide fame for his antics — enjoying it a shower from a garden hose, growling stomach at the door and showing to charge towards a group of people on a lawn.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sonya Hay, who lives in a southern Tasmanian town where Neil was spotted this month. “He really is the talk of the town.”
Although it’s not unusual for southern elephant seals to come ashore – the marine mammals spend several weeks each year on land to molt – Neil must have been unusual in his visits to communities near Hobart , said Clive R. McMahon, an ecologist at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science who has studied the behavior of elephant seals.
Unlike other seals born in nearby wild colonies, Neil, who is only a few years old, was born on a beach near the city, possibly because his mother disappeared, said Dr. McMahon. But with no other young seals to socialize and swim with, Neil must have had a lonely youth. Elephant seals, added Dr. McMahon, “usually return to the places where they were born – so maybe that’s why Neil thinks this is his home.”
There are always concerns, however, when wild animals, especially ones of Neil’s size, get too comfortable around people. This year, authorities in Connecticut, citing safety concerns for travelers, killed a moose who wandered into Bradley Airport. Last year, a 1,300-pound walrus named Freya suffered the same fate after climbing onto piers and boats off the coast of Oslo, Norway. And last year, authorities had to relocate Neil after he was harassed by dogs and people, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania told a statement in April.
The department warned that Neil would eventually grow to more than 16 feet long and weigh more than 7,500 pounds, making him potentially dangerous if provoked. “It’s very important that he’s not used to being around people,” Sam Thalmann, a wildlife biologist with the department, said at the time. The department would not provide further information about Neil, or respond to questions about whether intervention may be needed again in the future.
said Dr. McMahon, the Sydney-based ecologist, who is likely in the coming years, Neil, which scientists are monitoring with a The GPS stuck to the fur on his head, will continue to return to the Hobart region, unless by some stroke of luck, or a very long swim, Neil finds another group of elephant seals that he can grow. “The prospects,” added Dr. McMahon, “is not good for him.”
For now, Neil appears to be spending his days lingering near the fish and chip shop in a rural community about 25 miles east of Hobart, where he alternates between a boat ramp and the middle of the road.
“He was very peaceful, very funny; he wasn’t moving,” said Sandra Wray, the restaurant’s owner, recounting how her staff, concerned for Neil’s safety, notified the police, who helped herd the seal back into the water with the siren. His gray color, he added, “is almost the same color as bitumen” which would make it difficult for a driver to see the seal on the road.
Tasmania Police did not respond to questions about how many complaints they have received, or whether they have encountered any other similar situations involving wild animals.
Some residents said that while they had heard the odd complaint, Neil was generally well-liked by the community and only seemed to act out when people got too close.
“I thought he was dead to be honest at first, because he was just lying there,” said Stephen Godfrey, who lives in a different area from where Neil was seen, the first time he saw Neil on the sand near his home . “But then he started moving.”
“He’s been here and gone for a while,” said Mr Godfrey, 34, adding that he hoped Neil would continue to visit the seaside region where he stunned many of the residents. “It’s like he’s part of the community now.”
