CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A big elephant seal took a mistaken flip and was seen lumbering alongside a road in a coastal city in South Africa early Tuesday, stunning residents and provoking a rescue effort to get him again to sea.
The 2-ton seal, which an animal welfare group stated was a younger male, was making his means by way of a suburb of Gordon’s Bay close to Cape City.
Locals got here out of homes and recorded movies.
“That is unreal. Hello, bro, how did you get right here?” one girl requested.
Workers members of the Marine Unit with Shark Spotters facilitate the transportation of an elephant seal that discovered its means right into a residential space in Gordon’s Bay, close to Cape City, South Africa, Tuesday, Might 27, 2025. (AP Photograph)
Police and an area safety firm tried to comprise the seal by parking patrol vehicles round him. He rested his enormous head on the hood of 1 automotive and half-climbed over one other earlier than slipping free, crossing a highway and carrying on up a sidewalk.
The seal finally stopped subsequent to a shopping center. Animal welfare officers anxious he was too removed from the ocean to search out his means again and would possibly change into exhausted and dehydrated. They estimated he weighed round two tons (4,400 kilos). Elephant seals can develop to twice that measurement.
A crew of marine wildlife specialists and a metropolis veterinarian sedated the seal and guided him into an animal transport trailer to be returned to his pure habitat at a close-by bay.
The native Cape of Good Hope SPCA later posted a video on social media of the seal making his means down a seaside and towards the ocean.
“Sea you later,” the video stated.
___