Seal Tales

Firstly, I apologise for the slightly gruesome nature of the picture below. Those of a wet blanket nature might not want to scroll down too far. But I think it's sort of necessary and I'm hoping, with crossed fingers, that there will be some nicer pictures to come.
So... the story...
Last Sunday evening, I'd taken The Jeepster for a little walk on my local beach. Of late, we've had a large seal and a couple of pups washed up along the shore here, all sadly dead. So when a couple, and their particularly shrill Yorkshire Terrier made me aware of a seal pup they'd found, it didn't really come as a suprise, and I mentioned to them that there have been a few recently. But then we noticed a little flipper movement...
Although weak, the pup was still alive. The couple left, whilst I got in touch with the relevant people. Within a couple of hours, (and following possibly the most impressive sunset of the year) out of the pitch darkness that flooded the beach, a couple of volunteers from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue had arrived to diagnose the condition of the pup (one of them, Andy Crouch, happened to be a friend of mine. I wasn't aware of his little sideline in rescuing sea mammals. He's like the Batman of the North Cornish shore line, and that's pretty cool.) It was fairly obvious the pup wasn't in the best state, with a bad eye and several very visible injuries to the face. The volunteers decided that the seal had to be rescued, and managed to get her into the rescue bag that they carry (although small, cute despite the gore and obviously weak, I hadn't expected the pup to try and take Andy's hand off. But it also showed that she had some fight in her, which was a good thing.)
Once in the car park, I left them to it. The pup was to be given necessary fluids, and then taken on the long drive down to the National Seal Sanctuary in Gweek, where she is right now. Through the night I got great updates via text from Dave Jarvis, the Director of the BDMLR, as to her condition. It turns out she had over 50 bites (wasn't me, honest), a very bad eye, was malnourished and still very much a baby seal. They've put her on antibiotics too, to control an infection. At the Seal Sanctuary, they decided to name her 'Violet', due to the amount of antibacterial spray they had to put on the bitemarks. Currently, she's still a sick little seal. But she is, despite the injuries, still alive. In the next few days, pending her condition, both the BDMLR and the Seal Sanctuary are likely to have reports on Violet, which I'll repost to here, and let you know how she's doing. My fingers have been crossed since Sunday night. They hurt a bit now, but I'm not uncrossing them until she's in the clear. So far, so good.
For more information on the BDMLR click here, and to visit the Gweek Seal Sanctuary website, click here.
Updates soon. C