Whatever happened to Sammy the Seal?

Around this time last year I spotted a seal in the River Lee as I was crossing the bridge to the Bus station one Saturday morning. As a city girl - the large city variety - the appearance of a seal was very foreign to me and it took me a good couple of minutes until I worked out that what I was looking at was not a bin liner but something that is one with nature, so to speak. It had its diver’s outfit type head half exposed above the water, staring at me with huge round dark brown eyes, no more than 5 meters from where I was standing. What loving, soft, brown eyes it had– but it’s hard to tell with seals. Stunned by my find, I stood there gazing back at him, with my not so unloving soft brown eyes, either.

Then I panicked. What do I do? Call the ambulance? Or, maybe the fire brigade? Who do I call? Will it need to be airlifted out of the river? I must need to tell someone that a creature of nature had ended up outside of nature. Something must be done! A year earlier I was living in London where a whale had mistakenly taken a wrong turn and got stranded a long way up the Thames in the city and no one knew what to do with it. This early Saturday morning, I was seeing a similar emergency unfold in front of my mind's eye. Finally I decided there was nothing to be done about it- at least not for now.

Despite telling everyone I met that day, the whole thing was met with a slight bit of enthusiasm and then the topic was changed, which led me to believe that my very urban upbringing and conceptions about life went into overdrive at the sight of something that to my perception should only be seen in nature programmes. It also led me to believe that a seal swam up the river every other day in Cork and therefore it was not really worth mentioning. So I dropped the whole thing.

A day later I saw it again and then, again. Soon it was privately christened Sammy the Seal. Over the following five weeks, Sammy was free-styling it up and down the river between the flour mills and The Gate cinema. If you stuck around for long enough, Sammy would make an appearance somewhere. The more time passed the further up the river I would see Sammy.

Then, he disappeared. After weeks of patrolling the river, Sammy was suddenly nowhere to be found again.

Ever since, I have sometimes longingly walked along the river, wondered if Sammy is doing alright wherever he is - if he finally found his way back into the wilderness or if his carcass lies at the bottom of the river.

The last I heard about the whale in the Thames was that after it died, stranded amongst seven million bewildered Londoners, its bones were given to the Guardian to keep, where it was put on display for a little while and then packed away in boxes to be archived. As far as Sammy goes, I would hate to think that employees of the Irish Examiner are currently using his skin for mouse pads.