Carol and I got out for our daily walk a little late today, so we only had time to walk down along the waterfront. Of course we walked out to the end of State Pier to see if we could see any seals.

“Look, there’s one,” said Carol when we were about halfway out the pier.

I didn’t see it. “Where?” I said, and then, “Oh, I see it.”

“No, not that one, there’s another one,” said Carol. There were two seal heads bobbing in the water.

We got out to the end of the pier. “Look, there’s one really close,” I said, pointing down. At about the same time, Carol spotted yet another one. There were more than ten seals swimming around the end of the pier. Three of them were very close.

“You can hear them breathing,” I said.

“Look, there’s a little one,” said Carol. “They’re gamboling, that’s the only word for it.”

One of them looked up at us with its big dark eyes. When it exhaled, it lowered its nose to the surface of the water so that it blew a cloud of water droplets out in front.

We stayed and watched the seals for a good ten minutes, and then it got too cold to stand there any longer. We walked home feeling very satisfied.