Getting a seal to sit still for an X-ray is about as hard as you would expect
Neptune the harbour seal is accurately named, because as far as everyone at Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park Conservancy (APC) is concerned, he is king of the sea.
"All of our seals have great personalities," says animal care specialist Jackie Enberg. "But Neptune is a really big personality."
"He's kind of popular," adds her colleague Heather Penner. "He's the most popular of the group. Everybody wants to be his friend."
Neptune was the first seal to live at the conservancy as a rescue. He was originally found on the West Coast, suffering from a severely damaged eye, likely due to an encounter with either an orca whale or a boat propeller. The eye wound up having to be removed, but Neptune has thrived in his new home.
When Penner and Enberg noticed Neptune had a cough, they were worried.
"A seal can cough for all sorts of reasons," says Enberg. "It could be something as simple as just coughing up a piece of fish, or it could be something more serious like pneumonia."
What had the pair especially worried was the fact that Neptune was already getting over a skin infection, meaning his immune system was compromised. They decided to give Neptune a chest X-ray to make sure everything was OK. But getting a chest X-ray from a seal is about as hard as it sounds.
Seals don't love land. Their "safe place" is the water. On land, they move around by "galumphing," which is the actual term for it, and an activity that is about as graceful and efficient as it sounds. To get a seal to galumph onto an unfamiliar metal plate, and then stay still long enough to get X-rayed, is no easy task. Neptune doesn't trust the plate, and when Enberg and Penner try to coax him onto it, he galumphs around it, and then makes a break back into the water. And this happens over, and over, and over again.
Finally, after multiple tries, Neptune finally makes his way onto the metal plate and sits still, where the X-ray reveals his lungs are fine.
Also on episode 4 of Arctic Vets, APC's head vet, Dr. Chris Enright, heads to Churchill, Man., where he helps wildlife officers keep polar bears away from the town, before flying to Cochrane, Ont., to do an house call at a polar bear rescue.
Watch Arctic Vets, Fridays at 8:30 (9 NT) on CBC, or stream it on CBC Gem.