George, a yearling gray seal, may have been confused about his whereabouts due to the lack of sea ice.contributed by RCMP Const. Matthew Muirhead/Supplied
On a cold, dark night, Constable Matthew Muirhead pulled over on the side of Route 18 in the PEI fishing village of Murray Harbour. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was about to encounter one of the surliest perpetrators of his decade-long career as a Mountie.
He flipped on his flashing lights and stepped onto the black asphalt. A young grey seal stared back. George, as the officer would later come to call the seal, had wide inky eyes and traces of white pup fuzz that reflected in the headlights of his patrol vehicle.
After many years of rural policing, including four on the island, Constable Muirhead thought he’d seen it all – he’d had to coax horses, moose, even a bear out of the middle of the road, usually with a bit of strategy and a gentle nudge toward their habitat.
But George, he soon learned on the evening of Feb. 9, would have none of it. Each time officers tried to entice him toward the coastline, he hissed and shimmied in the direction of the woods.
The call about the errant seal came into police from the Marine Animal Response Society, a non-profit that rescues distressed animals.
This time of year, executive director Tonya Wimmer says the group receives three or four calls a day from January to March about wayward seals in all three Maritime provinces, “in people’s yards, through fields, into the woods, up the streets,” – and most recently Thursday waddling around outside the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown.
“They should be out on the ice and just slip into the water, but these seals have immediate access to land and so they’re not quite figuring out what direction to go,” she said.
Grey seals used to breed on the ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but over the past few decades they adapted to giving birth on islands and beaches in Nova Scotia and PEI because of the gradual loss of sea ice, said Xavier Bordeleau, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans research scientist specializing in seal ecology. Last year, ice dwindled to a record low 3.2 per cent in the gulf – half that of the year before and well below the long-term median of 8.3 per cent, says Environment and Climate Change Canada.
George the seal rests in the back of RCMP Const. Matthew Muirhead’s patrol vehicle on Feb. 9, 2023.contributed by RCMP Const. Matthew Muirhead/Supplied
Nearly 17,000 new pups are born this time of year in the gulf. Once they’re weaned, many are clueless about how to survive and become disoriented, with only about 15 per cent making it past their first year.
Vehicle and vessel interactions are one of several threats to grey seals, and vehicle strikes are often fatal, particularly to young ones.
“They have a very low perspective being on their bellies and trying to see where to go. As soon as they wander off a bit, they can get confused and lost and they don’t know where the water is,” Mr. Bordeleau said. “So they might go the other way, closer to roads.”
In George’s case, that was three kilometres from the coastline on Route 18.
Constable Muirhead pulled police issued blankets from the trunk of his patrol vehicle. But he soon realized police blankets weren’t thick enough for wrestling a seal. A local woman on scene offered to dash home, soon returning with a plush polyester bed comforter.
The officer stood on the shoulder next to the seal. He threw the blanket over the animal like a net and tried to roll him into submission. George hissed. He writhed and flapped, nipping the officer on his right pinky finger and squirming out of his grasp.
In the frozen darkness, the wrestling match continued on the side of Route 18 for more than an hour with cars slowing and passengers’ eyes widening at the realization that this was cop versus seal, brawling in the snow.
Losing each time to a slippery marine mammal might frustrate some. But Constable Muirhead kept coming back for more, adrenaline and his own natural instincts taking over. He had to capture the seal not only to protect the public, but to remove the animal from harm’s way.
Finally, in one swift move, the Mountie skidded the blanket under George’s flippers and yanked the blanket over his head. His partner, Constable Andrew Nicholson, pinned him from the back. “We rolled him into a burrito to keep him from biting and slapping us,” Constable Muirhead told The Globe and Mail.
Next to four-foot snow drifts, Constable Muirhead clutched George in a jiu-jitsu half mount, for about 15 minutes, until he stopped thrashing.
Then they lifted him onto the back of the Ford Explorer. George, flopped across the leather backseat, looked up at the two men with his dark glassy eyes on the drive.
At the government wharf, Constable Muirhead opened the back door and George wriggled out, galumphing toward the harbour.
Back at the station, the officer sat at his desk, writing a report on the seal capture when the next call came in. George was back, last seen hobbling up Wharf Lane, toward Route 18.
Still covered in dirt and reeking of fish, the constable jumped back in his cruiser.
This time, he knew what to do. In short order, Constable Muirhead nabbed George with the thick bed comforter. Then he headed to a new location. At the edge of the sea, he watched George slink into the black water, making sure that this time, he actually swam away.