A five-year-old West Vancouver girl is traumatized but OK after being dragged into the water by a seal Tuesday night.
Her father, Mike Cunning, was cleaning fish at the Thunderbird marina when he heard a splash.
He wasn’t overly concerned, thinking his daughter, Caleigh, had just slipped off the dock.
“I thought; ‘Well, she’s got her lifejacket on, she’ll bounce to the surface,’” he said. “But she didn’t bounce to the surface. So I ran over, and she popped up.”
Cunning said his neighbour saw the seal jump out of the water, grab Caleigh by the hand, and drag her in.
“She had some profuse bleeding from her hand and she’s got four deep puncture marks around her wrists,” he said.
She was treated at hospital and released.
After the incident, Caleigh asked her dad why the seal had pulled her into the water.
“I said; ‘It probably thought you had food in your hand.’ But she was still upset about it,” Mike recalled.
“So I finally said, ‘The seal wanted to go swimming with you.’
“She thought about that for a second and said, ‘Well I think the seal was rude for not asking first.’”
