The swing of his enclosure door or a visitor walking onto the deck caused him to surf his way across the water of his small pool in a frantic greeting. Riding his own speed-generated wave, KP2 would slide onto the deck and then up our pant legs. He identified each of us in a ritualistic series of snuffles up and down our legs, nearly tripping us in the process. Soon he learned to block doors with his body just to keep us with him a little longer. The same people-friendly behavior that had initiated his removal from Kaunakakai Wharf in Molokai made the little seal desperate for human companionship.
Isolation, not weather, had sent him into depression.
• • •
“I’LL TAKE CARE OF KP2 for the holidays,” Traci volunteered one day. To give Beau a chance to return to Hawaii to celebrate with friends, she offered to take the brunt of the feeding schedule for all of the animals at the lab.
There was an ulterior motive for Traci’s wanting to stay in town. Between animal feedings, power tools, and lab construction, Traci was also an accomplished singer. With herring scales beneath her fingernails and the odor of dolphin breath in her nostrils, she took to the stage of Twin Lakes Church in its annual holiday concert. Work boots and bleach-stained sweatshirts were replaced with a black evening gown and pumps. Her long, dark brown ponytail was coifed and her lips painted. I’d never seen her in a dress, much less in makeup.
With a hundred other men, women, and children, she raised her voice in the pure joy of Christmas music. To those of us in attendance, the transformation was every bit as miraculous as the tidings of comfort and joy she sang about so beautifully.
The next morning Traci mucked out KP2’s enclosure with a garden hose and scraper pole as usual. While she cleaned up discarded fish bits, there was no hint of what had taken place the previous evening. She was back to the earthly reality of KP2’s stubborn refusal to eat.
The tough-as-nails trainer with the heavenly voice drew up one of the white Adirondack chairs from the truck transport. She had planned all along to share her holiday lunchtime with the seal. So in the warmth of the sealarium, she ate a turkey sandwich in silent thought.
KP2 watched from his pool, initially unsure of Traci’s inactivity. She didn’t move or try to force another fish to his lips. This was uncharacteristic of the trainer. Curiosity soon got the better of KP2 and he finally slipped onto the deck. The young monk seal inchwormed his wet body toward her, sniffing her pant leg in his usual greeting. When Traci didn’t react, he nosed the cooler that contained his uneaten breakfast. His seated visitor continued to quietly eat her sandwich. Somehow the game rules had changed.
Slowly Traci opened the cooler and tossed a herring into KP2’s pool. He watched as it sailed through the air and splash landed. Then the trainer tossed another and another. The dead fish shimmered and schooled as they sank. Immediately, the motion caught the seal’s attention. In his mind’s eye, the fish had suddenly come alive. KP2 whirled around and dove enthusiastically into his pool, gulping any herring along his swimming path. He circled the bottom perimeter of the pool, feeling for the fish with the long whiskers of his muzzle extended forward like a cat. He sucked larger fish into his mouth whole, then thrashed them when he surfaced as if they were still alive. As with the octopuses in Kaneohe, he tossed his fishy prey, pounding them into submission by shaking his head back and forth. Within minutes, the seal that had been reluctant to let one fish pass through his pursed lips had filled his stomach with over two pounds of herring.
With a full belly, KP2 once again slid onto the sealarium deck next to Traci. This time, rather than head to the heat lamp to sunbathe or nestle in a pile of toys, he crawled under the trainer’s Adirondack chair. Doglike, the seal stayed curled at her feet, content in the simple human contact and sounds of the Pacific Ocean in his tiny ears. Traci just smiled knowingly.
Since the beginning, all the little seal really wanted was human comfort. He showed us that he was willing to sacrifice everything, even a square meal, for it.
• • •
BACK IN HAWAII, Christmas Day was heralded, as it was two millennia before, by the arrival of a mother. Early in the morning, RK22, the seal mother who had so abruptly abandoned KP2, returned to the location of his birth. RK22 didn’t call for him or make any other sound. Yet she stayed on the Kauai beach for several days, rolling in the warm sand that had once been mingled with their blood. She nuzzled the ground and sniffed the air with no other seals in sight. She watched and she waited. Then as mysteriously as she had appeared, she slipped back into the water.
11.
Maui Wauwie
For all its accomplishments in the sciences, engineering, and the arts, UCSC, to the embarrassment of University of California administrators, has never gotten past its 1960s roots and geographical location. Named by Rolling Stone magazine as “the most stoned campus on earth,” there is a perceived countercultural aura that attracts freethinkers, and the occasional free-smoker, to the school. Whether the reputation is deserved or not, pot farms indeed dot the surrounding redwood forests and can provide a seemingly endless supply of weed to students, medicinal marijuana establishments, and downtown pipe shops. And priorities are priorities for the campus. While budget cuts forced the library to cancel subscriptions to many scientific journals, preparations were still under way for construction of “Dead Central,” a new library wing dedicated to the Grateful Dead archives. I love our school, whether it is stoned or not, and given the local culture, I have become adept at differentiating the straight from the baked, ripped, floatin’, chonged, and wasted. Consequently, it was not difficult for me to recognize that I had a stoned seal on my hands.
On the January afternoon in question, KP2 swayed and fixed his large, cloudy brown eyes on me. He stared without comprehension. If his lips had been capable of curling into a smile, I’m sure they would have done so. The smallest and most mundane objects in his sealarium—boxes, hoses, plastic floats—momentarily fascinated him. Then suddenly each was summarily dismissed as something new grabbed his attention. Back and forth the seal weaved across his enclosure. Every corner was explored; every detail inhaled with a snuff of his nose. Even his tiny pinhole ears seemed to droop on either side of his head.
“He’s totally high!” Traci noted the obvious, shaking her own head as KP2 tried to wedge himself into the small space beneath the Adirondack chair she was sitting in.
There was little doubt that our endangered seal was “under the influence,” although not by his own doing. After sixty days in his isolated, heated pool, separated from the rest of the animals at the lab, KP2 was finally ready for his last health exam before release from quarantine. One last roadblock prevented his move: we needed a blood sample to ensure that he was free of any diseases capable of infecting the seals, sea otters, and dolphins on the other side of the fence.
But the seal was not cooperating.
After so much handling during the previous twenty months of his young life—handling that included a blood sample on each capture, release, and transfer—KP2 was sensitized to needles. He was especially sensitized to people that came bearing needles. The moment a team of humans arrived in his enclosure trying to act nonchalant, KP2 knew that something was up. His sight might have been failing, but he could hear the crinkling from the sterilized paper wrapper of a syringe a mile away.
His previous blood samples had been drawn from the giant epidural vein that ran down his spine. The site was the seal equivalent of the crook-of-the-elbow needle stick for humans. I had taken blood samples from Weddell seals, harbor seals, and giant elephant seals from this “sweet spot.” Compared with humans or sea lions, getting a blood sample from a phocid seal is remarkably easy. With the seal lying belly down on the ground, you palpate the hips, draw a triangle from the hips to the spine, and stick in the shallow depression formed by your thumb. It’s the easiest vein in the world to hit. The trick is getting the seal to lie quietly whi
le you poke.
KP2 knew the palpation sites and would have none of it.
“Watch this,” Beau instructed me. With the seal lying on the ground next to him in perfect blood-sampling position, Beau began petting the quiescent animal. He started to run his hand down the seal’s back. The seal never moved a muscle; instead, he seemed to enjoy the free scratches and attention. KP2 looked like a veterinarian’s dream. Starting with the seal’s head, neck, and shoulders, Beau petted and slowly slid his hand farther down. As soon as his hand reached the halfway point on the seal’s back, KP2 immediately flipped over. The seal rolled completely onto his back, exposing his white belly. He spread out his front flippers, arched his neck, and opened his mouth wide in a “What the heck?!” posture.
No amount of encouragement could get the seal to turn back over. His flipping behavior was so ingrained that no one could touch KP2’s lower back, tail, or even hind flippers without the seal rolling over suspiciously. He never bit, but we also didn’t push the sensitive animal to that point.
“Well, what are we going to do?” I asked as the seal eyed me warily.
“It’s going to take time to break him of the habit,” Beau remarked. “He’s just like Puka. He’s learned how to fight off the vampires.”
Puka, one of the ex–Navy bottlenose dolphins waiting to meet KP2 in a neighboring pool, was renowned for his battles with needles and veterinarians. During his military stint in the Dolphin Systems program, discipline and schedules were essential. There was no time for wusses afraid of needles when soldiers’ lives were at stake. To avoid having to sedate the dolphin for a blood sample, the Navy would gather five or six of the largest marine mammal trainers and soldiers to steady the animal as he floated in shallow water. The mere presence of a person carrying a needle, including myself on occasion, immediately transformed Puka from imperturbable dolphin into determined fighter. I was always astounded at how quickly and how far the dolphin could hurl grown men into the air with a flick of his tail. Often the inexperienced ended up with bloody noses and bruised ribs in the process of trying to get a simple blood sample out of the dolphin.
It was not the needles per se that Puka resented; it was the physical restraint that accompanied the procedure.
These days, after years of training, Puka quietly rolls upside down in the water and flops his large flukes into the waiting lap of a trainer sitting on the pool deck for his monthly tail vein blood sample. Despite his current passivity, he still harbors the memories of the old days and first cocks his big head suspiciously whenever I walk by his pool. But after checking my hands for a syringe, he rolls over in the water for a friendly body rub. Sometimes it is all about how you ask.
• • •
KP2’S VETERINARIANS in Hawaii had used a combination of drugs and manual restraint to control him for his previous medical exams and blood draws. This worked well when he was a small pup of thirty pounds, but the method was becoming less effective every day. Now that he was back to eating, KP2 was growing so rapidly that physically holding him down for a blood sample was not an option. In time he would weigh over four hundred pounds and be able to shake off a team of veterinarians with needles as easily as Puka.
Eventually, Traci and Beau would train him to voluntarily participate in the blood-testing sessions like the recalcitrant dolphin and the rest of the animals. Veterinary procedures were a practical part of their behavioral repertoires, just as they would be for any well-mannered dog or cat going in for a checkup. The only difference is that these animals have the advantage in size, strength, and water.
KP2 was certainly smart enough to learn the behaviors. There just wasn’t enough time to overcome his fear of needles before we needed to move him out of quarantine.
After consulting with Dr. Gregg Levine, KP2’s Hawaiian vet, Dr. Casper settled on a light dose of Midazolam, an ultra-short-acting muscle relaxant. The plan was for KP2 to quickly fall asleep, allowing us to obtain a blood sample before he had a chance to even think about flipping over. What we hadn’t realized was that Midazolam, along with its anxiety-reducing properties, was a hypnotic. Rather than falling asleep, the monk seal went tripping with the best of the Santa Cruz “weed-whackers.”
As we waited for the drug to relax the seal, he bumped unsteadily into walls and people. All objects were sniffed and subsequently bitten. KP2 was not a mouthy animal, but under the influence of Midazolam he used his enormous whiskers and mouth as a means of exploring. Wandering over to me, he looked up with a hazy expression, tickled my leg with his probing whiskers, and then slowly put his mouth around the toe of my shoe.
“No-ooo,” I warned the fuzzy-thinking seal. He then rolled over to nip at the sandals of a student volunteer, and nuzzled and chomped on a garden hose, nearly puncturing it with his sharp teeth. He climbed and slipped down walls in sluglike slow motion.
“He’s not very respectful,” Traci remarked when KP2 tried to slip his wet, heavy body across her foot, up her leg, and then into her lap.
“That’s because he sees three of you right now.” Beau laughed as he tried to guide KP2’s bulky body off Traci and then out of a corner.
Resisting any helping hands, the little seal finally rolled onto his back and shut his eyes in perfect repose. He mouthed at a plastic float by his head and finally lay quietly with his belly to the sun.
He wasn’t asleep; he just didn’t care.
Taking advantage of the seal’s brief intermission, four of us righted KP2 and made short order of drawing his blood sample. It was the usual phocid easy stick and the light-headed seal couldn’t have cared less.
Afterward KP2 headed to his pool for a snack, albeit in slow motion—slow even for a seal. Leisurely slipping into the water, KP2 waited expectantly by the edge of the pool as Traci retrieved his food bucket. Outwardly, he seemed to have recovered from the effects of the drugs. My impression quickly changed when Traci offered him a thawed fish head. The relaxed seal sunk down to the bottom of the pool and proceeded to nudge the dead fish through the water in an effort to make it swim. He mouthed the fish head, spit it out, and then nudged. He pushed it along with his nose and held it in his mouth, only to let it roll off his tongue. Across the pool bottom he scooted the fish head until Traci gave up trying to feed him.
“Obviously, Midazolam is not all that ‘fast acting’ in seals,” she quipped as she dumped out the rest of KP2’s lunch. It would take a long afternoon snooze in the sun before the Hawaiian monk seal returned from his trip to the “higher” side of Santa Cruz.
• • •
ONE WEEK AFTER KP2’s blood test, I found myself in a dental surgeon’s chair dealing with a tooth that had cracked under the intense cold of the Antarctic. As I looked at the IV drip feeding into my arm, I asked the surgeon what was in the line.
“Midazolam,” he replied. “You’re not going to care which tooth we are working on!”
I started to sweat, concerned that I would start crawling up the walls or biting the surgeon’s shoes. Apparently, I incessantly repeated this concern and something about Pele’s revenge to the surgical team during the entire procedure, although I have no recollection of any of it.
There was a certain level of scientific curiosity and egalitarianism in having to experience what KP2 must have felt. My teacher side decided that I should share my newfound enlightenment with Beau, Traci, and my graduate students. The moment I got home I sent the following e-mail:
So yo know all ofths drugs we give to msrine mamals- vlaiu, ketamine medazolam, etc. Eveyt wonder what theyt are thingking? We;; this stuff maked you totally WHACKED?!? Whoooo baby,
Think I better for to sleep.
now get to werk—kreshaeeee- the whip cracks!Q??1
Terei
No wonder the seal was trying to make a dead fish swim.
12.
The Lost Seals
KP2 inchwormed his
way across the cement walkway of the marine lab, following Beau like a faithful dog. The trainer found nothing unusual in this as he was used to traveling with a Hawaiian dog by his side. Kali, the short-haired puppy he’d adopted in Hawaii, had been an inter-island frequent flyer when Beau commuted to dolphin facilities on Oahu and the Big Island. Flight attendants knew Kali by name as well as her penchant for mangos, papaya, and lilikoi (passion fruit). As a puppy Kali had been allowed to play in the plane aisles, to the amusement of the other passengers. Through the use of peanut butter rewards, she had learned to walk politely next to Beau, ignoring any distracting sights and sounds around her. Now the “poi dog” was a mainlander and Beau’s constant companion. She was also a test dog for training techniques that Beau would design for KP2. The only difference was herring tails replaced peanut butter for the seal.
“Come on, Mr. Hoa,” Beau called, using the seal’s lab nickname. KP2 responded excitedly by bouncing out of his small quarantine enclosure and onto the sidewalk. For the eighth time in his young life KP2 was headed for a new home. This time there were no U.S. Coast Guard or military flights, no vans, trucks, or police escorts. Instead, with a snort and a chuff the small seal humped along behind Beau, slowly making his way toward his big new pool, leaving a snail trail of water behind him. For the first time since his arrival on the mainland he was free to explore. The gate to the main compound was swung open, suddenly revealing the colors of the California coastline to the wide-eyed seal.
The sights and sounds of people and animals, the expanse of blue sky, the oceanic vista as well as the exercise initially overwhelmed the young seal. Periodically he stopped to look around and take it all in. With his rolling, stumbling gait and head raised in curiosity, he reminded me of the mainland dogs brought by their owners to Kaneohe beaches immediately after release from the state-run quarantine facility. Dogs imported to the islands were kenneled by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture in a four-month quarantine. Upon release, the previously jailed animals could only stare blankly at the roaring surf on their first trip to the beach, seemingly wishing for the four walls they’d considered their Hawaiian home.
The Odyssey of KP2 Page 10