Harping on Seals

Artwork by Isabelle Lu, staff artist

Harp seals are on the rise; yes, those bulging, button-eyed slick-backed bobbing girls that pout like a glacier when the magnetic field flipped. I looked them up after pondering their population, wondering whether they were dwindling in the thick of the heat or flipping off the sun and dawdling underneath the deep ocean current. My eyes pulsated, the back of my head hurt from staring at a screen so long, blue-light piercing every corner of my head, wrung, dirty laundry over the fate of those harp seals.

Google tells me the Harp seals are making a comeback; from what? From a failed album or a lost season? No, the uptick on the graph yells a series of numbers; since the 1900s, the decayed morality, the seals boomed onto the ice caps. I’ve never seen one, not up close, but I can’t help but wonder if they know they’re okay. Google tells me Cape Cod is teaming with the seals, eating away at their fish stock and causing mass-hysteria. For once, I would like an abundance of something in the wake of mass absence; I would like the seals to be okay and to live on their beaches, rolling in the light sand, prosperous as the world around them melts.