2017 Life Logs, Day 206: Visit to the National Marine Life Center
Date: Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Weather: Partly Sunny, Chilly Wind from the N; High 62, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
Some days don’t go as planned, but still they end up to be fantastic . . . and today was one of those days. Sam and Jonah went to their fort building camp in the morning and I was to pick Ollie up in Woods Hole as he had a dentist appointment at 9 am. I didn’t know about this until late yesterday, so when I found out I cancelled our registration to do the inflatable humpback whale at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History this morning. Then when I got up this morning, I got a text from Heather saying she had arranged an afternoon play date for Jonah and that Jed was going to pick up Sam from fort building so I could still go to the Museum of Natural History with Ollie. Long story short, I arranged a new reservation for 11:15 (the only time available) to do the inflatable humpback whale, but when the dental appointment took longer than expected and traffic interfered, I had to call and cancel that reservation. I left a message begging for a later time, but when Ollie and I were well on our way, I got a call back telling me that there was just no room for us today. Ollie was very disappointed, but he was a true trooper. I had to think fast to come up with an alternative activity, and when I ran it by him, he was all in. We changed direction and went to the National Marine Life Center in Buzzards Bay.
I had hoped we would be able to see their newest seal pups, but when we go there I found out the only viewing is through a live camera. This center takes in seals and turtles that need some sort of rehabilitation and gets them ready to release into the wild. The highlight of day was ‘adopting’ a baby harbor seal named Rachel Carseal (word play on the name of scientist Rachel Carsen).
Our contribution will help provide the food and supplies needed to keep Rachel Carseal healthy until she can be released. In addition to our adoption, Ollie really enjoyed the other activities at this center. We worked wooden seal and whale puzzles,
participated in a scavenger hunt,
watched the seals and turtles via live cam, and made the decision to ‘adopt’ a seal in honor of the recent loss of LuSeal and Bumper, the harbor seals at the Woods Hole Aquarium. We still don’t know the cause of the sudden deaths of LuSeal and Bumper, but we know we will miss them so very much. Now we will follow the growth of our newly adopted harbor seal, Rachel Carseal, until her release back into the wild.
