Couple Rescue Orphan Seal Pup on Beach

“Sparky,” an orphan seal pup, was safe Saturday at a makeshift Laguna Beach marine shelter after a Los Angeles couple strolling the beach discovered the creature, took pity on him and dropped him off at the San Pedro police station.

“He was on the beach and they put him in their car and took him to the police station--surprise!” said Judi Jones, director of Friends of the Sea Lions Marine Mammal Center. “They called us and we came and got him.”

She said the shelter has received double the usual number of orphaned animals this year, perhaps because recent storms have separated pups from their mothers.

Sparky, as the police dubbed the 20-pound pup, was discovered by Greg and Verda Lewis at 1 a.m. as they walked along Cabrillo Beach. The couple said they tried to put the pup back into the water, but he stubbornly kept scurrying back out.

Shelter officials said Sparky had lost a lot of weight but otherwise appeared healthy, and should be back in the ocean within a few months.

Meanwhile, he is living at a Laguna Beach gift shop along with four other pups that have turned up beached and motherless in the last week.

Sparky will spend the next few months putting on weight and learning to fend for himself, shelter officials said. “He’s got to learn how to catch fish so that he can take care of himself when he goes back out into that great big world,” Jones said. “We’ll have to basically play mom, put the fish in the water, wriggle them and make him chase after it until he catches on.”