Around New England

Seal Trapped In Pond Busts Out, Flops To Police Station

September 23, 2022

A seal that got itself trapped in a small pond in Beverly flopped its way to the city’s police station in the middle of the night, triggering an overland ride to Connecticut and eventual freedom.

The seal – whom locals took to calling “Shoebert,” because it lived for a while in Shoe Pond – apparently swam from the Atlantic Ocean into Beverly Harbor and then up the Bass River and through a culvert into the smaller southern portion of Shoe Pond, which is divided.

Possibly feeling cramped, the seal next “climbed over an embankment and knocked down a small fence to go from lower Shoe Pond to the upper pond,” according to the Gloucester Daily Times; the upper pond is larger than the lower one, but it’s also farther inland from the ocean.

Wildlife officials spent considerable time on Thursday, September 22 trying to get the seal back to the ocean, but couldn’t catch him. They weren’t worried about the seal’s health because the pond has enough fish for the seal to eat. But they wanted to get the seal back to its natural environment.

The seal took care of business on that score. In the middle of the night, the seal left the pond and flopped across a shopping center parking lot to get near the side entrance of the Beverly police station – showing up at 2:30 a.m. Friday, September 23.

Police officers, an animal control officer, firefighters, and officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from the International Fund for Animal Welfare showed up, and managed to get the seal into a wildlife carrier.

“Shoebert appeared to be in good health and was a little sassy in the early morning hours,” the Beverly Police Department said in a Facebook post.

In short order the seal was headed to Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut for a medical evaluation and eventual release in the ocean, police said.

Source: Beverly Police Department’s Facebook page

 

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