Seal Baby Read online

  Seal Baby

  Seal Baby

  Midpoint

  Seal Baby

  By Anne Spackman

  Copyright 2012 by Anne Spackman

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover art by Megan Davies, used with permission

  pannya.deviantart.com

  Once upon a time, in the Arctic Circle on an ice floe, a small baby harp seal was born. This seal baby we will call Cynthia. Many baby harp seals were born that year. Now, seals are aquatic creatures, though they are mammals. They move around on short, wide flipper fins, and have a large body. Seals are graceful in the water, but not so graceful when they move about on dry land, which they do by using their short flipper fins and stomach muscles. The harp seals were born with a thick layer of blubber, or fat, that protected them against the cold. They were also born with a short, fur coat. So they were quite warm even in the cold of the Arctic Circle.

  One afternoon, when Cynthia and the other pups were only two weeks old, three of the seal babies gathered together to swim at the edge of the ice floe. Cynthia and two others glided through the water, playing together and making sounds as they got back up to the ice to take a nap in the afternoon sun.

  A week later, an Inuit Indian young man who was out walking came across the baby seal Cynthia. She was still only three weeks old, and still nursing off and on from her mother. The Inuit Indian man saw the seal at a small distance and shrugged. Though the Inuit people often ate seals and used their skin for fur coats against the cold, the Indian man saw that this baby seal was young, and he felt she should not be killed for food. So, the Inuit Indian turned and walked away.

  Cynthia was weaned, or stopped drinking her mother’s milk, not long afterwards, and the mother seals abandoned their babies so that they could grow up and hunt on their own. This wasn’t a bad thing at all, for seal babies could live off body fat stores until they learned to catch fish on their own, and it was natural for their mothers to leave them after they stopped drinking their mother’s milk.

  Cynthia grew to be a fine young harp seal. She loved to swim and sit on the ice floe in the afternoon sun, taking naps. She learned to catch fish, and ate a lot of fish to keep herself going every day. She swam down into the water, and could stay down there up to two hours! Like other seals, she had lungs which allowed her to stay underwater for a very long time.

  One day, Cynthia had to swim fast and hard away from a polar bear, who had come to where Cynthia and a few other seals lived looking for lunch. Cynthia was very scared of the polar bear. The polar bear had submerged into the water and was trying to catch one of the seals. Luckily, Cynthia was far enough away that she could swim away from the polar bear, and she survived. A while later, the polar bear left, and Cynthia returned to land. She was so relieved to find the polar bear gone!

  Two years passed, and Cynthia had a baby seal of her own. She cared for the baby seal on the ice floe much as her mother had cared for her. The baby seal nursed for milk from her, and she let him drink his fill. It was sad to leave him when he no longer needed her, but Cynthia wished her pup the best for a happy life and returned to the water once more.

 

 

  Anne Spackman, Seal Baby

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