But why is she blue and green? 🕵️♀️
At the end of September, a concerned citizen called Seal Rescue Ireland after seeing a baby seal pup on Ennereilly Beach all alone during a storm. The rescue knew the pup wouldn’t be able to survive very long on her own, and after watching her to see if her mom might come back, they made the decision to take her in.
“She had a swollen eye and was extremely weak,” Kathy Baker Walsh, marketing and media manager at Seal Rescue Ireland said. “It was likely she was separated from her mum during Storm Agnes and had been weakened from the experience. Pups at this age are not equipped to swim and their lanugo fur is quite heavy, and they do not have the swimming muscles to swim long distances, so she was very lucky to have been found.”
Not long after arriving in their care, the rescue posted pictures of the seal, later named Caragh Lake, and many people may have been shocked to see that she was bright blue and green.
As cute as the colors were, Caragh didn’t come that way — and she wasn’t going to stay that way, either.
“We use a disinfectant and antiseptic solution called chlorhexidine to clean cuts, abrasions and wounds, along with manuka honey and antibiotics when needed,” Walsh said. “This is safe for animals and is sprayed on and is a greenish blue color. Caragh’s umbilical wound was sprayed to prevent infection, and as seal pups move around a lot, it tends to spread all over! Which is why she is so green! As soon as her wound heals, she will be back to normal seal color!”
Despite her ordeal, Caragh is now doing wonderfully in the care of her rescuers. She was pretty quiet and calm when she first arrived, but she’s quickly transforming into everything but that.
“Grey seals are quite feisty, and so we are seeing slowly that this young pup has a good fighting spirit and is becoming louder and more assertive, a great sign of recovery,” Walsh said.
Blue-green Caragh will be fully healed soon enough, and she can’t wait to get back to the ocean, where she belongs.