October 14, 2015
A baby seal who adopted a wildlife cameraman is the subject of today’s Writing Wednesday.
The Story:
Cameraman Raymond Besant’s job on a nature documentary was to spend three weeks filming a colony of grey seals. He built a “blind”—a hiding place that looks like it belongs in nature, with a peek hole for the camera to shoot through—so that he could work without disturbing the animals. One morning he showed up for work and found the blind had been damaged. At first he thought it was because of a storm the night before, but when he looked inside, he found a sleeping seal pup (baby).
"I gently shook the blind and eventually he shuffled out. He had wrecked the place and he was molting so there was fur everywhere. It smelled pretty bad, like a wet dog."
He tried building all kinds of barriers with driftwood across the entrance to stop the seal pup from getting in, but every morning he would come back to work and find a little head poking out of the blind.
Eventually, he decided to stop trying to block the seal, and started sharing the space. "He was just a clever seal that had found somewhere warm and dry to stay," said the cameraman.
Your Assignment:
Tell the story of the baby seal pup in your own words. Use details from what you read and from the photographs to make your story come alive for your readers.
When you are finished writing, click on the yellow "Comments" button at the bottom of this post to share your work. Happy Writing!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
