“Whoa, oh! Guys?” Nate called to anyone within earshot. “Uh, guys, I need some help here!”
KP2 knew that he had Nate cornered and was unrelenting in his pursuit. The rambunctious seal continued to climb up, causing the ladder to wobble precariously and bring the frantic human to him. But the frightened man counterbalanced and avoided the seal by moving even higher. Diving to the pool bottom, KP2 began biting the protective plastic feet of the ladder.
By the time Beau and I arrived, Nate was hanging awkwardly from the ropes with his legs entangled in the ladder and KP2 circling like a shark.
“So how’s it going up there?” the trainer asked cheerily.
“He was after me! That seal is crazy!”
“Hoa?” Beau queried the seal. Together we distracted KP2 long enough for the maintenance man to escape. However, in trying to remove the step ladder we quickly discovered that it was not the human the seal was attracted to—it was the ladder. KP2 dove and wrapped his body around the legs of the ladder. Thus began a tug-of-war, with the seal using his body weight to pull the ladder back into the water while we slipped across the deck trying to pull in the opposite direction.
“You’d think this was his pink boogie board,” I complained as I struggled with the seal. KP2’s response was so focused that the best we could do was drag him up on deck entwined in the lower rungs of the ladder. Only later, in a conversation with KP2’s Hawaiian caretakers, did I piece together KP2’s unusual attraction to stepladders. For the first seven months of his life at the Kewalo Research Facility, ladders had been the seal’s only connection to people, food, and nurturing. When stepladders arrived in his small pool, humans had joined him. When stepladders left, so did all their attention. KP2 was determined not to let another ladder leave without a fierce struggle, a habit he never outgrew at the marine lab.
• • •
EVENTUALLY, WE WERE ABLE to repair the damage to KP2’s sealarium roof, but not without adding one more in a never-ending trail of bills. From the beginning, taking care of KP2 and conducting our science was a risky cat-and-mouse game between me and the university accountants. I was growing increasingly uneasy with my inability to keep in front of the costs. The dismal economic climate in California did not help.
Unprecedented budget cuts were tearing the heart out of the University of California and threatened to shut our campus down. “Governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger and soon thereafter Governor Jerry Brown attacked the state deficit by squeezing the university. Each $500 million hit created a deeper sense of doom at the lab, and I began to dread e-mails from UCSC chancellor George Blumenthal, already a basset hound of a man, who grew even more hangdog with each cut to our campus.
Salary reductions and furloughs, hikes in student fees, and staff layoffs crushed the spirit out of our tight-knit academic community in the redwoods. Student anger mounted and spilled over into sit-ins and protests that destroyed part of the UCSC admin building. Fortunately, some students took a different tack.
With so few paying jobs available, students arrived on my doorstep volunteering to help care for KP2, Puka and Primo, Wick, Morgan, and Taylor, and the birds. To my amazement and relief they willingly dedicated over sixteen hours a week working for free at a time when they needed money most. Without this corps of volunteers to clean pools, thaw fish, and train and feed animals, we surely would have gone under.
The volunteers from my lab were easily identifiable on campus. Their clothes were bleach stained from cleaning pools and there were fish scales lodged beneath their fingernails. The difference was also apparent on their faces. In contrast to so many of their classmates, they appeared happy. It all stemmed from living their passion, and sharing it with a cohort of like-thinking individuals. In the company of KP2 they had become ‘ohana and dreamed of making a difference in an increasingly unstable, self-absorbed world.
I let the students continue to live their dream, never mentioning the bills that consumed my waking hours and then some. Neither the student volunteers nor the trainers knew how close we came to shutting down. A major blow came when a grant proposal to support our research with KP2 was declined by the Marine Mammal Commission. Governmental funds for the Hawaiian monk seal program had been cut in Washington; the trickle-down effect meant no funds for outside researchers. The news was devastating. We were already barely scraping by.
A second event following soon thereafter brought me to my knees.
Budget cuts to the university instigated a scavenger hunt among campus administrators who scoured financial reports and bills. With the intensity of starving coyotes, they searched for any way to save money. Campus recreational programs were downsized, teaching assistantships denied, staff retired, and faculty pressed to breaking. Finally, as university accountants nipped away at every possible financial corner, they found KP2’s and my hiding place. I had hoped that the budget crisis and furloughs would have kept them confused a bit longer.
“You owe the university $30,000 for heating salt water in the animal pools,” Randolph’s boss told me.
With a massive bill in hand, my heart sank. I was finally caught.
18.
Mother’s Day
In an attempt to raise at least a little bit of cash for taking care of KP2, I decided to host a 10K race. Local children and adults were invited to the lab, with all proceeds from the race entry fees going to support the care of the young monk seal.
Two triathlete friends, Penni Bengston and Mary Zavanelli, immediately took charge. They created monk seal posters and a race Web site without the benefit of ever having met the tropical seal. They also decided to host the race on Mother’s Day.
“I really don’t—” I stammered when they picked the second Sunday in May.
“It’s perfect!” Penni countered, cutting me off. “KP2 is an orphan. What better way to celebrate the day with him!” I reluctantly agreed.
As uneasy as I felt about the choice of Mother’s Day, I added one more detail. I wanted an authentic Hawaiian chanter to bless the runners before the race. There would be no mistaking the island connection to our venue.
• • •
MOTHER’S DAY ARRIVED with the rising sun casting a rosy glow over the lab. As Penni, Mary, and a crew of volunteers set up the racecourse, there was little for me to do until the athletes arrived. So I sought the solitude of KP2’s enclosure.
With all attention at the lab focused on race preparations, KP2 was bored. He had abandoned his usual sleeping spot and was busily nosing the bottom of a pool gate when I entered the sealarium. He never heard the opening and closing creaks of the door, or perceived the motion of my feet on the deck. I sat down quietly in the corner watching him.
The young seal had no perception of mothers or Mother’s Day. This was not surprising, since he had not had much of a mother. As mothers go, phocid seals are a schizophrenic lot, blending a self-sacrificing character with sexual promiscuity and child abandonment. KP2’s mother had taken this phocid personality to an extreme when she attacked him.
For seals, the period of maternal bonding from birth to weaning is a blink in time compared with that of dolphins and humans, who spend years nursing their young. Arctic hooded seals have the shortest nursing period of any terrestrial or marine mammal, a mere four days of interaction between moms and pups. Even rat mothers nurse longer. The other end of the seal spectrum is Russia’s rotund Baikal seal moms, which nurse their offspring for two months. I always found it interesting that these Russian seals were the smallest of all true seals but provided the longest nutritional head start for their offspring. With a six-week nursing period, however, the typical Hawaiian monk seal mother was not far behind.
When nursing, seal moms remain with their pups and forgo any other activity, including eating. Such focused devotion literally deflates these seal moms, as blubbery reserves are turned into milk to feed their ravenous pups. An
d this is no ordinary milk. The milk of a seal mother is so rich in fat that it is closer to cream. Human milk and cow milk are approximately 4–5 percent fat. By comparison, the milk of phocid seals is ten times richer, reaching a remarkable 65 percent fat in some species, almost twice the fat of whipping cream. Creating such a fatty milk diet takes a lot out of these marine mammal moms. By the end of a nursing period, the abdomens of the moms will have caved inward, exposing the sharp outlines of their hips and shoulders.
Rather than having to lose pregnancy pounds like human mothers, seal moms must return to the sea and feed heartily to regain their original streamlined profile. Meanwhile, their pups will have taken on the shape of beach balls with flippers. These rotund youngsters lazily digest the milk they have stored in enormous blubber layers for weeks, much like chicks use stored yolk to sustain their growth until they hatch. Eventually, hunger drives the young “weaners” to sea, where they learn to hunt for fish on their own. Through trial and error the seal pups begin to catch their meals.
Seal mothers never know of their offspring’s accomplishments or growth. They are long gone, seeking food and mates for next year’s pup.
Yet there is a unique facet to Hawaiian monk seal mothering that follows in the island matriarchal custom. Unlike other seal species, Hawaiian monk seals are exceptional in their altruistic behavior. Ignoring the drain on their own milk resources, they unreservedly play “auntie” to the pups of other females. A hungry mouth, regardless of whose pup it belongs to, will be offered an open teat. In this way abandoned pups avoid starvation.
Unfortunately for KP2, there were no other lactating females on the beach when his mother left. Otherwise his life would have taken a completely different trajectory. Motherhood had not been a part of his fate.
So, too, Mother’s Day left me empty.
• • •
I WILL NEVER KNOW what prompted Austin to walk across the neighboring mountain ridge on Mother’s Day two years before. When I returned home from the lab, my beloved corgi was nowhere to be found. The rush of panic was immediate. Austin had never left the property. I walked the mowed grassy acres and local roads for hours into the night, calling his name in a voice shifting in pitch from deeply angry to thinly fearful. Throughout the evening his metal dinner bowl remained untouched on the front deck and by morning the blue jays had started a raucous war over his kibble.
There was no time to continue my desperate search for the corgi. Students were waiting at school, and I had to put my emotions in check in order to teach. I’d retrieve them later when there was time to turn off the scientist. As I walked to my biology class I designed lost-dog reward posters in my head and planned an afternoon of searching the local woods.
Several hours later, when I finally returned to my office, a message from Austin’s veterinarian was on my phone. I hesitated when I saw the blinking message light and then quietly shut my office door. I wanted privacy for a phone call that I knew would confirm what I already felt in my heart.
“A dog matching Austin’s description has been found . . .” The veterinarian paused. “He was wearing a rabies vaccination tag from our office on his collar . . .” He stalled again and couldn’t get the words out.
“Where?” I choked. My pulse was racing. I knew.
“Your neighbor’s.”
My world turned colorless. Nothing seemed real as I drove home in a numbed stupor. Unconnected flashes of reality would leave permanent scars. A drive up a mountain road, a soaked blanket, a white paw, and a heavy wet body. Dirt and a backyard grave. Sobbing and darkness.
“Stupid, stupid!” I grieved angrily and endlessly. I sat outside by the overturned dirt of the grave site, my legs too numb to move.
I didn’t know how to do this; for the first time in my life I didn’t know how to act the part. What does a grieving scientist look like? There seemed no relief from the ache. Searching for any respite, I tried to rationalize myself out of the despair. “You know, through MRI scans scientists have discovered that intense emotional pain and physical pain activate the same neurological pathways in the brain. Maybe that’s why you can’t stop crying.” Then I broke down again. Science would not rescue me; I could not think my way out of the situation this time.
For days I repeated the scenario over and over again in my head. Each time I could smell the decay of the redwood forest and hear the gurgling of the small creek next to the house. Had Austin detected the tracks of a coyote and followed its trail up and over the mountain ridge? Did he see sunlight in the clearing of the neighbor’s house? Had sounds attracted him? No one was home when he’d entered their yard.
Unbeknownst to the small dog, his personal demon lay in wait. Austin’s path was blocked by the one monster we had so often battled together in Hawaii: water. Irrationally, paradoxically, he tackled his nemesis as instinct drove him to do. Austin plunged headfirst into the neighbor’s swimming pool. He pumped his stubby legs and swam frantically to reach the other side as he had on every ocean kayak trip and hike to Sacred Falls with me.
Here the tape in my head runs out. Did he ever reach the side of the pool? Were his legs too short to allow himself to pull his body over the edge? Did he swim to the bottom and inhale water on the way or did his legs simply grow progressively weaker as minutes passed into hours? Ultimately, the grief was not in how it happened; it was in my failure to be there to rescue him this time. In my mind I had killed the only animal who could see into my soul.
But there was much more sorrow in my tears than for the loss of this dog. Here was my payback for entering the man’s world of science. This was the one sacrifice they could never know. For my entire career I had been able to laugh in the face of glass ceilings, sexual harassment and innuendos, unequal pay, and discrimination. They were nothing compared to the ultimate sacrifice, that of motherhood. In dedicating my life to the creatures of the wild, home and family were as ephemeral as the clouds I had experienced over the Namibian desert or the tidal pools I’d swum in along the Kona coast. Austin was not just a reader of my soul, he was the child I would never have. He was my ‘ohana. And now he was gone forever.
• • •
AT LAST, KP2 SAW ME sitting with my knees hugged to my chest, brooding in the corner of the sealarium. He surfed across his pool at full speed to greet me. Stopping at the pool edge, he gauged my reaction. When I didn’t move, he used his fore flippers to slowly haul his body onto the deck. He inchwormed his way in my direction, all the time reading my mood from my downcast eyes and body movements. He showed no hesitation as he sniffed my pant leg. Then he laid his blocky head on my foot and shut his eyes.
My first inclination was to back away as I always did. Instead, I looked down at the sleeping seal and then placed a hand on his back. I began to stroke his fur. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any fish to give you,” I apologized, thinking he would move off once he realized that no reward was forthcoming. But KP2 didn’t look up at the sound of my voice. He was content to remain by my side. After several minutes I added, “Looks like Mother’s Day isn’t all that great for you, either, is it?”
We sat silently together, with me lost in thoughts of sacrifice and the impossibility of my lofty conservation goals. As time passed, I became more depressed as I added up the hurdles we faced. I watched KP2’s chest rise and fall with each deep breath. I could feel and see each heartbeat reverberate along his body. In petting his head and then his body, I was surprised at the warmth. Wet dolphins and sea lions always felt clammy and cold. KP2 was like a warm puppy, comforting to the touch.
“It is hopeless, isn’t it?” I tested the seal. I sighed, thinking I had finally had enough. It was time to stop deluding myself about saving endangered species.
I bent down to look KP2 square in the face to inform him of my decision. I was done.
The seal’s brown eyes opened as he felt my breath near him. Our faces were so close I cou
ld see the dull edges of the gray spots outlining his cataracts. The seal studied my face, although I wondered if he could even see me through his damaged eyes.
Before I could say a word, KP2 snorted loudly without warning. He sprayed my eyes and face with snot.
“You bugger! I know you did that on purpose!” I cried as I tried to wipe away the smell of seawater and rotting fish. I would smell his fishy breath on me for the rest of the day, no matter how many times I washed my face.
KP2 rolled back into the water with a splash and refused to surface. Instead he went back to playing with the gate bottom and vocalizing to Puka and Primo on the other side. It was his form of the cold shoulder.
I was ready to slap the water and yell “Get back here!” when I just stopped. KP2 resurfaced, sat up in the water, looked at me, and then saluted. The trainers had thought it would be a cute behavior for the seal to have in his repertoire—all sea lions knew the salute command. The problem was that KP2, like all phocid seals, had short front flippers compared with seal lions. He could not reach his forehead. The best he could do was wrap his stunted flipper across his muzzle. KP2 looked like he was holding his nose instead of saluting.
The seal knew exactly what he was doing. I started to laugh until I was crying and then began laughing again. I couldn’t stop, and I realized that KP2 knew me better than I knew myself. It had been a long time since I had experienced such a sense of closeness with an animal. Not since Austin.
It was also the first time in years that I had laughed on Mother’s Day. The young monk seal that had been attacked and abandoned by his own mother had never spent one moment looking backward. He had been kicked and caged, transported and trucked. He had lived in pools and pens, experienced the wild ocean of Hawaii and the California winter. Life was all about the adventures in front of him, and he always seemed to make the best of it.
The Odyssey of KP2 Page 17