PHOTOS: Police Rescue Baby Seal Trapped on Long Island Roadway

Police officers helped a creature on Sunday that found itself in a very precarious situation along a New York roadway.

According to Southampton Town police, dispatchers were alerted about a seal lying in the street at a Long Island traffic circle, and once officers made it to the scene, they located the baby harbor seal, CBS 7 reported Monday.

The department shared photos of the rescue. One showed an officer trying to keep the seal from getting away while another showed a police vehicle parked protectively beside the animal as it rested near a local business.

Social media users commended the officers for their quick response to help the lost creature.

“Thank you so much for saving that wayward baby,” one person wrote.

“The seal was very lucky. That’s a pretty dangerous traffic circle,” another commented.

According to the NOAA Fisheries website, harbor seals are considered among the most common marine mammals on America’s west and east coasts:

Harbor seals are part of the true seal family. All true seals have short forelimbs, or flippers. They also lack external ear flaps and instead have a small hole (opening to the ear canal) on either side of their head.

…

Harbor seal pups can swim at birth. They can also dive for up to 2 minutes when they are only 2 to 3 days old and by the end of their first month of life embark on journeys of over 100 miles from their natal area. Mother harbor seals sometimes raise their pups in nurseries—groups of mothers and their young—that help protect the seals from predators.

Meanwhile, officers protected the seal until it was transported by the Riverhead Foundation Rescue Center of the Long Island Aquarium, where the program director noted seal season was not far away, adding the recent incident was an uncommon occurrence.

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