Neither Sal nor I can see very well, anymore. I mean, we can see well enough to live, of course, but a lot of the details are blurred by decrepitude and the fact that our lifestyle does not require examination of minutiae so much these days. Writing this blog is about as ‘tiny’ as the world gets for me. I really only need to see my dinner plate, the movie screen and logs float by.

And that was what we did this morning. Saw a log and went for it. Actually, we had spied it earlier and it was high up the beach and just a perfect size for log furniture and so we waited until high tide today and went a-pickin’.

The beach was a rocky one and we know it fairly well. There are some big boulders that disappear when the tide is up but they lurk just below the surface. Outboard propellers are vulnerable. I aimed for the right place to land and gave the engine a bit of juice and then slipped the gear into neutral. If the un-powered blades glance a rock at slow speed, no harm is done. Not usually.

But doing so means that Sally, me, the dogs and the boat silently glided into the beach. The Honda at idle is pretty quiet. We slipped in. Sneaky-like. Stealth afloat.

No big deal, really.

Or so we thought.

As we silently approached the still somewhat blurry rocks a little ‘boulder’ lifted off the ‘mother’ rock. Big eyes. It was a baby seal pup and we had mistaken it and it’s still sleeping mother for rock.

And in we came at a quiet rush!

The little guy was not too proficient at launching himself and his mom was sleeping some herring off so he just jiggled and rolled until he was in a position to flop into the sea. That was enough to alert mom and, just as we were about to land on top of them, she managed to torpedo her and kinder out of the way.

The dogs, of course, erupted! Whatever those things were, they deserved a good telling-off and that was delivered with gusto. All hell broke loose for a minute.

We landed, got the log and left. Mom and son watched from a safe distance. Once we were gone, they went back. We felt like riff-raff. And we sounded like it, too. Still, all’s well that ends well.

Amazing. Guilt from Exxon. Guilt from a seal. Does it never end?