One weekend I went to Cape Palliser to see how the Fur Seal pups were getting on. The weather was wild and a storm was coming in. The seals were, sensibly, away from the rock pools and the beach – scattered over the grass, as if a giant wave had washed them up and deposited them on the hillside. The ocean tumult was exhilarating, but also intimidating, so I headed back to Wellington.
I was lucky I left when I did. The storm washed out the Lake Ferry bridge and Cape Palliser was cut off. It was nearly a week before the road was repaired and by then I was itching to get back to the seals.
When I did, it was a beautiful day, calm, sunny, blue-skied. A completely different place.
I hurried into the rock pool creche to see how the Fur Seals had fared and could immediately see something new.
A large grey rock? How on earth had that got there? Then it clicked. It was a seal. An Elephant Seal.
Massive. Improbable. Alone. Impossibly huge.
I don’t know where he came from (definitely a he), or when. Perhaps he blew into the shelter of the rock pool in the storm and decided this was a good place to stay and relax for a few days. Whatever, it was a majestical surprise; Elephant Seals are not typical on the North Island, and, in my mind, are more cold Antarctic than warm New Zealand coastline.
It is hard to convey the scale of him. 3 to 4 metres in length, and easily 2 or 3 tonnes in weight. Folds of skin, scars, snoring, the size of a badly parked car, with teeth. Giving me the side eye as I found somewhere to sit.
But not too close.
He wasn’t threatening, but he was also the kind of large that made me feel suddenly, inconveniently, plushy. Eminently squashable.
I was entranced. Even when he wasn’t moving. The immovable object. Asleep. A snoring boulder.
I went back most days for nearly two weeks, hoping to see him. He was mostly there. He seemed to float out of the rock pool at high tide, possibly to hunt down his lunch. Sometimes I was lucky enough to see him leave or return. Some days he was sound asleep on the beach.
Other days he was in the rock pool, drifting around in the deeper water. Yawning, a floating barrage. With whiskers.
The interaction between the Fur Seals and the Elephant Seal was fascinating. The parents gave him space. A LOT of space, but pretended he wasn’t there. It was like watching normal life happen around the edge of a force field. Life to the perimeter, then, nothing.
The pups, well. Of course they were curious. Creeping up on him, perhaps trying to work out what he was and whether they could use him as a springboard, or a soft landing.
No was the short answer. I would laugh out loud watching one pup either braver than the others or showing the kind of judgement that keeps evolution busy, creeping closer and closer. Then fleeing as soon as the Elephant Seal opened his eyes. Or his mouth.
The pups would creep towards him in little bursts, all dark eyes and whiskers and terrible decision-making. One would appear on a nearby rock. Then another. Then a third, because apparently curiosity is contagious and the responsible adults were asleep somewhere else. He’d move, they’d scatter.
On all the days I watched him, I never saw him hurt one of them. I saw looking. Gaping. A lot of side-eye. I saw pups edge too close and then think better of it. I saw adults avoid him entirely.
There was something wonderful about watching the whole colony rearrange itself around him. He did very little, but his presence changed everything. Paths shifted. Distances widened. The pups tested the edges of safety and then fled back into it.
He was compelling because he was like a rolling road block, a physical exclusion zone.
Not cute, not threatening, though no one / nothing sensible got too close.
Not doing very much, but impossible to ignore.
He slept. He snored. He floated. He watched the pups with the exhausted expression of someone who had accidentally become a tourist attraction.
And every time I saw him, I felt the same strange privilege.
To be there. To be absorbed in the daily life washing around this strange and wonderful visitor.