Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield Read Free Book Online Page A

out of nowhere and charged at me with the obvious intent of inhaling me.
    Strangely enough, while my face rested on the tongue of this animal, I remember recalling other stories of aggressive male elephant seals and that very little underwater footage existed of them. And, of course, there was the little issue of trying to figure out the proper response to this attack. There really wasn’t much else to do except let this enormous seal choke on me. I went limp. To my relief, the seal let go of my head. He was now looking at me with large, intense black eyes. Then his giant nose inflated, and he tried to swallow my head once more. This time, however, I gave him my camera instead.
    Was he playing? Was this some kind of a secret elephant seal greeting ritual? Was he, gulp, aroused? And what was he doing in the Sea of Cortez? I knew that elephant seals are partial to the cold, rich waters of the Pacific Ocean. I had to wonder if this one was lost. My brain was running at high speed. Should I film this rare encounter, or should I flee to the safety of the boat? The giant seal appeared calm and friendly, and while he repeatedly tried to grab my head, he did so in a very gentle manner. So, what the heck, I stayed. When he came up from behind me, I wondered, yet again, if I had made the wrong decision. He wrapped his flippers around me in an elephant seal version of a bear hug from which there was no escape. But again, he let me go without even scratching the camera lens. Eventually, he grew bored with me, and after twenty-five minutes he took off. Chewing on a big camera must not have been much fun after all, I thought.
    Back at the boat, I found my friend Seth basking in the Mexican sun. He had encountered the seal, too. He said it had caught him from behind in its customary embrace. Faced with the same set of decisions, Seth opted for swooning. Once he went limp, the seal let him go. Seth said that, at first, he had no idea what had gotten hold of him. He had never been hugged that tightly in his life. He said it felt like a scene from an old prison movie. “Not to mention,” he added, “that I was completely terrified.” We decided at that point to name the seal. For the rest of the trip, it would be known as Angus, from the Latin name Mirounga angustirostris.
    Later that evening, we went over the footage of the big elephant seal swimming through the waters off Los Islotes. As he moved around the camera, it became clear that Angus was exhibiting curiosity, not aggression. This unusual behavior left us counting the minutes until our next encounter. The next day, Angus greeted us as soon as we hit the water, as fascinated with our heads as ever. While I could offer the camera in lieu of mine, Seth had no camera and thus had a harder time keeping his head out of the lion’s mouth, as it were. All he could do was offer up an arm and shadow box with Angus.
    The giant seal took turns embracing us and dragging us through the water. He managed to totally dismantle my camera, sending floats to the surface and lights to the bottom. At one point, he grabbed Seth’s arm, shook him like a doll, then swam off with Seth tucked under his flipper for a tour of the rock. On the second lap, Seth managed to recover a little dignity by rolling onto Angus’s back for what looked like an elephant seal rodeo ride.
    We returned for four more days. But to our disappointment, Angus’s attitude had changed. His enthusiasm was gone. He seemed to want nothing more than to loll around on the rocks, his eyes relaxed and drooping, barely responding to the crabs crawling over him. Apparently, he was going to enjoy the sunshine, and that was that. With the star of our show suddenly uncooperative, we packed up our equipment and left.
    The next season, Jose Antonio informed us that Angus had gone shortly after we did. Elephant seals like Angus were driven to the brink of extinction at the turn of the last century. Fortunately, their numbers are growing, as