Seals are tough, dangerous mammals

ALONG the south west coast, this is the seal-pupping season.

Just before Christmas, neighbours phoned me to say that they had found a grey seal pup on a beach at the Seven Heads in west Cork.

The man who found it herded it back into the water, but it swam parallel to him as he continued his walk and then hauled itself out of the surf a few hundred yards farther along. With considerable agility, it crossed fifty yards of sand and fifty yards of sharp rocks and, by the time I came to see it, it had ensconced itself in a semi-circular niche at the base of an earthen cliff, a sheltered suntrap about as big as an armchair. There it lay, basking in the sun’s weak warmth, like a well-upholstered teenager in a wetsuit.