The Seal, Day 2

Yesterday, I drove to my wharf to see the dead seal that had beached there before it died. At first, I was disappointed.

My neighbor said it had been sighted alongside the dinghy to tend the sheep on the island across the way but I saw nothing. I thought the science teacher from our sister island, who had expressed interest in dissecting it, had taken it away.

But then, as I got closer, the patches of snow, edged by darker shadows where it lay on the light brown winter grasses resolved into a smallish shape: the dead seal. It's gray mottled coat blending perfectly with the ground, the outlines of it's body, echoing the snow patches that surround it so that I had to be quite close to make it out. The patterns of it's coat are shockingly beautiful. I understand why people trapped these creatures to adorn themselves. In the car, it looked so perfect, I thought surely it can't be dead. Surely it will be still breathing and the people who have been here before me are wrong. When I got out of the car and walked around to it's face, I saw eyes just like my elderly lab's eyes when she was a year old and a face whose shape was almost the same as a dalmatian I once had, when I was married, with similar markings and then when I bent closer to shoot pictures, I saw the flatness of the eyes that proved it's death without any need to check for a pulse.

The crows are coming now. I have to call the science teacher.