sam2cents
Seal watching
After completing a butterfly-recording transect I arrived at the beach. My usual tradition is to go down to the water and wet my hands. Just as I was doing so on this occasion a young Grey Seal popped its head out of the water only a few feet from the shore. This one was about the size of a golden retriever, but bulls have been known to reach 12 ft in length. They also possess massive bear-like claws.
My family are one of the many in Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden, (Denmark and Iceland too, I think) who are said to be descended from seals. This was a common tradition among seafaring peoples. My family name, Connolly, means "hound of the tide". According to the legend a cow seal once fell in love with a fisherman. She came ashore and removed her seal skin, revealing a beautiful woman. She hid the skin under some rocks. She must have been pretty good looking, or else the fisherman wasn't of particularly discriminating tastes, because when she appeared naked at his home he very quickly made her his wife. He obviously hadn't heard her latin name: Halichoerus grypus - hooked nose sea-pig.
She bore him a family, but grew lonely for the sea, and eventually returned. There are further complications in some of the tales, but most explain that this is the reason why seals come in close to shore to watch humans, like the seal-woman returning to see her human children as they grew up on shore. I guess this one must be a distant cousin.
Seal watching
After completing a butterfly-recording transect I arrived at the beach. My usual tradition is to go down to the water and wet my hands. Just as I was doing so on this occasion a young Grey Seal popped its head out of the water only a few feet from the shore. This one was about the size of a golden retriever, but bulls have been known to reach 12 ft in length. They also possess massive bear-like claws.
My family are one of the many in Ireland, Scotland, Norway and Sweden, (Denmark and Iceland too, I think) who are said to be descended from seals. This was a common tradition among seafaring peoples. My family name, Connolly, means "hound of the tide". According to the legend a cow seal once fell in love with a fisherman. She came ashore and removed her seal skin, revealing a beautiful woman. She hid the skin under some rocks. She must have been pretty good looking, or else the fisherman wasn't of particularly discriminating tastes, because when she appeared naked at his home he very quickly made her his wife. He obviously hadn't heard her latin name: Halichoerus grypus - hooked nose sea-pig.
She bore him a family, but grew lonely for the sea, and eventually returned. There are further complications in some of the tales, but most explain that this is the reason why seals come in close to shore to watch humans, like the seal-woman returning to see her human children as they grew up on shore. I guess this one must be a distant cousin.