Do Not Try This At Home

I usually write about my and other people's pets. However, this should not encourage anyone to keep this one at home as a pet. The following is from my short stories and poetry book: Moments of the Heart.

THE OLD SEAL

Fat-sleeked bodies glisten, fins thrash blackening the water until only the old bull is left on his solitary rock; a deposed king without subjects.

The seals had stayed on this island until the brief summer day relieved the arctic night from its long guard. Here, they had fished the bays without fear of being pierced by storm-driven floes. But on this day, they are to return to the far North to bear the offspring of their new ruler.

The old seal watches until they disappear. For uncounted seasons, he had led his herd unchallenged, reining in the impatient, encouraging the weak, beckoning the disheartened.

He attempts to heave his aching bulk toward the water. His wounds are deep and he longs for the icy spray to numb his pain.

Not since his early years had he been defeated as the herd’s leader. The younger bulls had never before attempted to challenge him. Secretly, patiently, they had waited for them to grow strong; and for him to grow old, and nearsighted, and weak. They attacked in the late morning while the females were sunning. His indignant, angry bellows had echoed over the island, then turned into grunts coarsened by blinding pain. One after the other, the cows had left his side to seek favor with the new ruler who impregnated the still wintry air with heady barks of victory.

A streaming mass of raw burning wounds, the old seal can no longer support himself on his frayed fins. Flat on his fat-rippled belly, he wriggles toward the shore, leaving a trail of darkening blood. He must reach the water before nightfall before frost will sink its murderous teeth into his exposed flesh. Red fog shrouds his sight as he heaves himself toward a drop of jutting rock that lies between him and the water. Over the millennia of their predestined journeys the tumbling herds had chiseled smooth slides toward the ocean. The old seal catches a glimpse of white froth and leaps with habitual faith and his remaining strength toward the savaging edge as razor gravel tears through him. Unconsciousness cloaks his senses.  The incoming tide halted his fall.

Crystals of white spray shudder on his pelt. The faint throb of life still pulses through the old seal’s heart. As the next wave crashes over him it carries him into the sea; he is home.