If he had thumbs, maybe he’d try hitch hiking. Photo: Instagram//Screenshot
A California sea lion found itself in the wrong place when it wound up on the Pacific Rim Highway, just east of the tiny surf, logging, and fishing village of Tofino, British Columbia.
Sea lions are a common sight in that particular area, but not so common six miles from the sea. According to the CBC, Ucluelet RCMP Const. Mark Macdonnell got the call about the wayward animal on Sunday morning. At first, he didn’t think he’d find anything on the road by the time he got there.
“It was definitely not something that I thought was actually going to be there,” he said. “I thought I’d drive down the road, see nothing, and turn around. But then I came around the corner, and all of a sudden, there’s this big sea lion in the middle of the road.”
It was a male sea lion, which can get very, very big. This one was a little over 300 pounds, and thankfully he was spotted by a passerby before the sun was up.
“They spotted what they thought was a bear initially,” DFO marine mammal co-ordinator Paul Cottrell explained. “And then [they saw] it was a sea lion… And they did the right thing. They called us right away. This animal is definitely out of habitat in this really odd area.”
Not only was the lost sea lion on the road, it was in a bad stretch of it. The highway leading to Tofino is narrow and windy, often with steep cliffs falling away on the sides. The sea lion was found on a blind curve where the side of the road falls hundreds of feet down to Kennedy Lake.
“I provided traffic control just so that vehicles coming around the corner could see that there was some type of incident and would slow down,” Const. Macdonnell explained. “Then I reached out to Parks Canada, and one of their wardens came and assisted me.”
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For the next hour-and-a-half, Macdonnell, with the help of highway workers and the Parks warden, coaxed the huge animal down the highway to the lake. Eventually, it found its way into the body of water and vanished.
“It was kind of startled because all these vehicles are driving by, and now people are stopping. So it might have been confused as to what to do,” Macdonnell continued. “So as it walked down the road, we’d back up a vehicle and block it from going back up the road.”
Officials believe the sea lion probably swam up the Kennedy River into Staghorn Creek before finding its way into Kennedy Lake. For now, all they can do is hope that the sea lion finds its way back into the ocean where it belongs.
“The animal is back in the lake safe right now, and we’re hoping that it can find its way out and back into the ocean,” Cottrell said. “At least it’s a lot safer than being on the highway.”
