The seal had possibly followed the family’s free-roaming cat to the house, which was a couple of hundred meters from the beach.
Living in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand Jenn Ross returned home from his errands on Wednesday morning and noticed that the bucket in the garage had moved out of place. He thought it was the family cat.
After going inside, he noticed that there is a seal in the house.
– I heard a flip flop sound in the lobby. I thought, dude, there’s a seal in there.
Ross says he still had a hard time believing it was actually a seal. She went to wake up her children and called her husband For Phil Rosswho is a marine biologist.
Phil Ross says it’s ironic that he was the one in the family who wasn’t there when the seal came into the house.
– I try to take my family to the great places where I work, but this time my work came home.
A free cat could have lured the seal inside
The house is a couple of hundred meters from the beach, where the Rosses have seen seals every now and then.
The family believes the seal had spotted the family cat Coco outside and followed it inside through the cat hatch. Coco was later found in a neighbor’s house, and it didn’t want to return to the bottom floor of its home where the seal had been.
The seal was picked up from the spot by a nature conservation authority, who took it closer to the shore. According to the nature conservation authority, there had been other seal rescue missions that morning, but the seals had not entered the houses. Apparently, the movement of seals on land is explained by a storm in the area.
In Jenn and Phil Ross’s house, the seal hadn’t caused more damage than moving things
– It was a polite guest. Didn’t poop on the carpet or the couch it was sitting on, which was fantastic, says Phil Ross.