Hi! I'm Builda.
As most of you know I'm an honorary member of the Shaffer family. Some of my friends and I are accompanying the Shaffers on their great adventure (if you look closely some of my friends and I are even in "the adventure begins!" picture). We've been with them in the Redwood Forest, the Bat Cave,the Griffith Observatory, and many, many, more!
Today I would like to tell you about some of the awesome animals we've seen on our trip, starting at the Elephant Seal Rookery! Ya ready? Here we go!
We were driving along when we saw a sign, "Elephant seal viewing -->". So, being the kind of family to check stuff out on a whim, we pulled over. Stepping out of our car, we headed over to the sidewalk, looked over the railing, and into the churning waves...
At first we didn’t see anything, but as I looked closer, a seal head popped up! Then it went down. As we saw more seals coming up and going down, I could see their gigantic brownish-black bodies. They were huge! As they were bobbing around, one big guy came up really close to us. That's when I saw his nose. It looked like a giant, wrinkly, gray, microwaved marshmallow… that was attached to his face.
A man standing next to us noticed our “oohing” and “ahhing.” "If you guys think this is amazing, you should look over there," he said, pointing. So we went down the sidewalk, and I couldn't believe what we saw.
The seals were everywhere! They were sun bathing, sand bathing, play fighting, scooting around like giant slugs with flippers, and just plain laying around. It was so awesome! I thought there were males, females, and little guys. But actually, they were all males! Some of them were just young.
We learned some cool facts from the “Friends of the Elephant Seals” that I wanted to share with you. Did you know that male elephant seals weigh as much as 5000 pounds and can be 16 feet long? During mating season, males don’t eat or drink for up to 100 days. During their two four-month trips to sea, seals dive continuously and never touch land. Only male elephant seals grow the long nose, and only after they’re five years old. Female elephant seals grow to as much as 1800 pounds and 12 feet long. When she is pregnant, she will spend 7-8 months at sea before returning to the rookery to have her baby. That is the longest uninterrupted time any elephant seal spends at sea.
Seal pups weigh 60-80 pounds when they’re born and are 3 feet long. At three months, the pups can dive deeper and stay down longer than adult sea lions and harbor seals. At 3 ½ months, they head out to sea and don’t touch land again until they return to the rookery six months later.
The life of the elephant seals at sea is very different from their life on land. On land, they are very social and often dog-pile. They don’t eat any food at all and are experts at relaxing. While in the sea, they will likely never see another elephant seal, they spend most of their time looking for food, and they are very active.
It was really cool to see some of GOD's amazing (and funny!) creatures.
Glad I could share this super fun experience with y'all.
See you next time! Builda
