CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. — Lillian Reynolds didn’t expect this at 7:45 on a Sunday morning or any day for that matter.
She was about to put the kettle on when she looked out the window.
“Oh my God,” she thought. “What is that?”
It was a seal on the sidewalk in front of her house on Patterson Drive in Charlottetown. It was headed from the Hillsborough River in the direction of the baseball diamond.
It was moving fast, manoeuvring easily through the snow.
“Oh my God,” Reynolds thought. “I don’t want him to get hit by a car or something.”
She phoned the Charlottetown police, reporting, “There’s a little seal travelling down the road here.”
They got her address.
“Well, I’m going out with him,” Reynolds said. “I’m going to stay with him until somebody comes.”
The seal kept moving, heading down towards the next block and turning up the street. It looked upset, Reynolds said.
She tried to slow it down, talking to it the whole time. But the seal seemed to be on a mission.
The police arrived as it turned up the street. They’d brought a plastic blanket in the back of the car. They got it out and tried to get the seal into it. It didn’t want to go.
The seal was agitated, slipping and sliding on the ice. But police managed to get it into the back of the car as Reynolds held the door open.
“Put this blanket over his head,” she said, noting she’d seen it in wildlife shows.
The police laughed, then drove off.
Reynolds later got a call back from the police saying the Fisheries Department told them to return the seal, unharmed, to the Hillsborough River.
“They gave the OK.”
Reynolds was pleased with how the situation was resolved.
“First thing in the morning before coffee, (it was) kind of a shock,” she said. “We were all working together there, just trying to help this little guy.”
