Sealed Up

Life's intercessions have caused the light blogging lately here (though check out After School Snack), but in some travel guides to Finland, I discovered Finland's native species of seal, the Saimaa ringed seal, which merits blogging for sheer weirdness and for cool coloration. Slowing backing away from the brink of extinction in the Saimaa chain of lakes in southeast Finland, the Saimaa seals have been living inland for 8000 years, since water connections between the Saimaa lakes and the Baltic Sea were lost after the last Ice Age. They're pretty remarkable creatures, and full of that Finnish sisu - they'd have to be, to give birth every February in a den on the ice...