Keeping Up As Best I Can

Unfortunately I do not have much to write here. Of course I tend to say
that then get on a ramble that turns out, in fact, to be very long indeed.
Regardless, it's not to say that nothing has happened, just that, for the
most part, it has been uninteresting to most "normal" people. We got our
weather stations and tag transmission receiving stations set up (for later
fur seal monitoring), we started prepping our lab and continued finding/
unpacking things around camp, we have done a couple cape-wide phocid (seal,
not fur seal though) censuses, and we finally today went out and actually
did some work with elephant seal weaners.

I have to imagine I wrote about the elephant seal weaners last year, though
I will be honest I do not remember what exactly I wrote and don't feel
bothered enough to look it up. I do remember explaining though that they
are called weaners because they have recently weaned from their mothers (or
really the mothers forced them to wean by leaving).

When elephant seals wean, they are literally too fat to swim. Well,
hopefully they are at least- if all went according to plan and mom had
plenty of fat to pass on. They are butterballs in the shape of a sausage
with big eyes and a few undersized flippers stuck on in a way that they
rarely actually reach the flattened snow beneath their massive bellies
except during the great undulations that slowly bounce them around the
Cape.

They also tend to not be the smartest of all animals. Pretty much all they
know at this point, other than basic bucking, squirming, and chicken-like
squawks as defense mechanisms is the game "Does this fit in my mouth and
can I eat it?" It's a lot like watching a toddler discover the world one
mouthful at a time. Except this toddler weighs 200 lbs and has their feet
and hands attached directly to their torso, bypassing the need for legs or
arms altogether. That is how an elephant seal do.

Of course this bumbling awkwardness of jelly rolls and gumming snowballs
does give them some very endearing qualities. It is just about impossible
not to smile when you see one. Watching the effort they go through just to
be able to see you around their own bellies makes you just want to go up
and squeeze them. Even, despite the fact that they are, like most elephant
seals, covered in a mixture of their own feces and that of others, you
still want to just cuddle them. There was a group of three closely huddled
together today that I really wanted to just join as a middle spoon. I'll
tell you one thing- it would be plenty warm in there (did anyone else just
get the image of the ton ton on Hoth from the Empire Strikes Back? Maybe
you have to actually be very cold trudging through the snow when looking at
these guys to jump there…).

Anyway, that's my brief introduction to elephant seal weaners. For more
information, please consult www.google.com. If a friend asks you about
them, feel free to send them a link from www.lmgtfy.com (it stands for let
me google that for you and is a very entertaining little tool. It continues
to be cold here, with occasional glimpses of sun and warmth. I don't think
its been above freezing for more than a few hours in the last 4-5 days and
we are getting some decent winds tonight (30-40mph). Apparently there is
also a storm coming our way early next week, so that should be fun. Luckily
the bulk of our work (fur seals) has not showed up yet. Literally. There
are only a handful of males on beaches at the moment, though there are more
showing up every day. We also have seen an unusual amount of crabeater
seals, particularly young animals. That includes several juveniles and a
pup crabeater, which offhand nobody could remember ever having seen here
before! We have a few weddells as well, including a few ladies with freakin
ADORABLE pups. Just saying.

Goodnight y'all, I'm going to try to go to sleep before the wind picks up
and keeps me awake!