05/13/2010

Dear Readers,
Although this week’s column is a departure from my usual format, it underscores on a personal level the issues I previously discussed regarding the “bystander effect” and how common it is for people to withhold assistance from those in need.
 
The other night around 10 p.m., I was walking along the ocean’s edge with my adult son. Lost in our conversation, what was intended to be a short stroll on the beach for a few blocks became a couple of miles before we realized it. My son suddenly stopped walking and pointed at a small, dark bundle laying about 50 feet inland in the dry sand. We rushed up to discover it was a tiny seal with dry, papery skin. We thought at first it was dead but then the little guy sighed and struggled to lift its head. My son immediately poured out his bottle of Gatorade, rinsed it out and filled it with ocean water to gently pour over it.
 
The seal seemed to respond by opening his eyes and trying to move. My son had set the bottle aside and we watched as this poor creature tried to slowly and painfully inch himself closer to it. He wanted more! We had no idea how to get him back into the ocean or even if we should, for although that small amount of water rejuvenated him, he tried to bite us if we drew closer.
We ran to knock on the door of a nearby waterfront house and told the owners what we discovered. Apparently the seal had been there all day and the Humane Society had already been contacted. Local marine life professionals had said not to touch the seal because it might be diseased and/or attack. In a nutshell, the neighbors were advised that if it were healthy enough it would rest and go back to sea under its own power. If not — well, then it just wasn’t meant to be.
 
We both felt helpless and confused. I saw the same vulnerable look on my son’s face as when a man helped him save his beloved dog after it had been hit by a car. “We can’t just leave the seal out here all alone,” he told me.
 
I was remembering the column I’d just written about the Pasadena lady who fell on the Old Town sidewalk and how no one helped her. Along with these thoughts were the tragedies of the Good Samaritan homeless man whose stabbing death went ignored, or — going farther back — the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese whose screams went unheeded by her neighbors. The common denominator of all of these was the apathetic excuse, “It wasn’t my problem.”
 
While some might say a gray seal wasn’t our problem, either, we decided I’d stay with it while my son jogged back two miles — much faster without me — to get a flashlight, a large water basin, beach towels and an iPhone to look up rescue websites. Had we both left, it might have been too dark to find him again. So there I sat on a moonless night about 3 feet away from this little animal. I talked and sang lullabies to him just as I would a child and, after what seemed an eternity, my son returned and anxiously asked if it was still alive. Thank goodness I was able to tell him “yes.” I also laughed when I found he’d brought a can opener and a can of chicken soup; apparently we had no fish in the pantry.
 
We were finally able to reach someone by phone at a save-the-seals Web site in Canada. We were told not to feed him anything or try to drag him on the towels to the water but to see if he was strong enough to go there himself. As per instructions, we carefully and patiently poured pail after pail of water on him. He began to revive more with each splash and, for the first time, found his voice and softly barked. Inch by inch he began to edge closer to the ocean waves and finally — well after midnight — he happily disappeared into the waves, oblivious to our cheering and applause on the beach. 
 
I realized how wonderful it feels to be of service. I looked over at my shivering son with his sopping wet sandy pants, bare feet and big grin and, at that moment, I’d never loved him more.