Geneva’s story: a happy ending after a rough start
By Bruce Mason, Gabriola Sounder
Monday, June 23 2008
Margy Gilmour and her husband Chris Straw were walking along the rocks at Orlebar Point on Sunday evening, June 15th, when he spotted a dog who was keeping a keen eye on a tiny seal struggling to get up on the shore.
“It kept getting washed back into the water as each wave receded,” Margy recalled. “Chris grabbed a long board and helped to nudge the pup up out of the water.
“It was making faint calls, but soon stopped and just lay there, exhausted,” she continued. “It was not at all afraid of the dog, which we chased away, or the crowd of people who came over to see what all the excitement was about.”
Apparently the pup had been there, close to the shore, for a while.
Gilmour reported: “I ran home, called GROWLS - Lisa Carter was manning the dispatch line - and got a call back from a volunteer in Vancouver within 10 minutes.
Gabriola’s Bob and Sheila Lake were dispatched and so was a helicopter, donated by a Richmond resident Norm Snihur who owns and flies it and responds to animal rescue calls up and down the coast.
The Lakes scooped up the pup and delivered it to the heli-pad for ferrying to the Island Wildlife Natural Care Centre on Salt Spring Island. Snihur played a key role in the rescue.
Sheila Lake said: “Norm volunteers his time and helicopter for wildlife rescue. We and all the critters are fortunate to have him and his commitment to saving injured and abandoned wildlife, including this young seal which has a much better chance at survival due to the quick helicopter transport.
The Lakes called Margy to say the pup made it to the Centre and then she received a call from Jeff Lederman at IWNCC (http://www.sealrescue.org/).
He told her that it’s still quite early for seals to be giving birth and the pup was premature. It still had fluffy thick fur (lanugo) all over its body. A full-term pup would have smooth, gray spotted fur, and one close to full-term would at least have smooth fur on its flippers and tail fins.
“So it’s almost certain that the pup was abandoned by its mother at birth; it was at most a few days old and still had the umbilicus attached,” Gilmour told the Sounder. “Later it was feeding well at the Centre and had only a little damage to one eye.
“Apparently the gulls go after the pups and peck at their eyes, so it’s not uncommon for pups to be brought in with both eyes gone,” she added.
Lederman - founder of the centre - is unique in the field, practising integrative medicine. He said seal pups often die, brutally pecked at by gulls, eagles, etc.
Thankfully this pup was saved from that fate. Every year the centre has a theme for naming the pups. This year it’s cities. And so “Geneva” it was.
The newly rescued and duly named pup will stay at the centre until it is healthy enough to be released back into the wild.
The Sounder salutes everyone involved and for enabling us to share the story with our readers. At last some good news has washed up on our shores and has an ending, a happy one at that. And it is reassuring that so many people care and act quickly and that so much expertise is so close at hand.
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