I thought 'I'm hallucinating, this is just wrong,'" Swoffer told the paper.
"Then it looks at me with those huge brown eyes. It was so cute..."
Swoffer then called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (SPCA), who called the Department of Conservation. According to a report by Stuff.co.nz, the department was already looking for the pup. When biodiversity program manager Chris Clark came to pick up the animal, he told Swoffer he'd been looking for the seal all afternoon and that it had likely just been weaned from its mother