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A curious young seal broke into a New Zealand home, molested the family cat and hung out in the hallway for a couple of hours.
The Ross family had an unexpected visitor on Wednesday morning. Phil Ross is a marine biologist based at the University of Waikato. He and his wife Jenn have two children, Noah and Ari, and live just over 150 meters from the beach, where they often see seals, especially at this time of year.
The seal got through one of the family’s cat flaps on either the garage door or the front door.
Just before 6 a.m., Jenn left the gym to go to the gym.
“As she got into the car, something barked from below and shuffled away. She thought it was someone’s dog but didn’t really think about it much.” Phil explained.
When she returned an hour later, she opened the door and found the family’s newest pet – “a cute little seal.”
“It got a little startled and hobbled down the hall to the guest bedroom.”
Phil identified the seal as a 10-month-old New Zealand fur seal. It got into the house and terrorized the family cat, but Phil suspected the cat was mostly to blame.
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“I’ve never heard of seals going through cat flaps, but I blame our cat, Coco. Coco is quite territorial and tends to try dogs down and then chased them up the side of the house and through two cat flaps into the garage and then downstairs in our house.” Phil explained to FOX 9 in an email. “Coco hid at the neighbor’s house and didn’t come home until the seal was gone. Then the next day she didn’t go downstairs to where the seal was. We didn’t see the interaction between the seal and the cat, but it was like that definitely something Coco didn’t like,”
The seal was captured by a ranger to be safely returned to the sea. (Jenn and Ari Ross)
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The young seal was inside for about 90 minutes before Jenn took it outside, where it was later captured by a Department of Conservation ranger.
“Jenn, my wife, is very level headed in these situations and handled the situation perfectly,” he continued.
The seal was safely released back into a local estuary, Phil said.
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“It’s really common for young seals to land on unusual stretches of coast at this time of year. The young are gradually weaned, go out on their own and, like most teenagers, can make poor decisions about where they end up. We’ve just had a pretty strong storm so some seals show up on the beach to rest and recover before they head out to sea again. This particular seal was obviously in good condition so he decided to explore the sand dunes and landed near roads and houses,” said Phil
Sarah Rumpf is a digital production assistant at Fox News. You can reach her on Twitter at @rumpfsarahc