Listening to the continuous bleating of the seal pups and bawling of cows on the Island of Pribilofs, I could have closed my eyes and imagined I was in the midst of a big herd of sheep, but the puffing or huffing of the bulls and the warning roars were as foreign to any domestic flock as were the rush and pound of the Bering Sea breakers on that rugged northern shore to a meadow scene at home.
I thought of the marvelous ingenuity that Nature uses among her many kinds of animals.
Here below me were the fur seals, gathered from the four corners of the wide Pacific Ocean.
They set flipper on these islands only during the summer time, for the purpose of breeding.
The bulls arrive first, and then the females come later and select their own masters.
Once a lady seal has taken unto herself a husband, she is under his power and dominion for the season.
With little deep night and day for two months, and without a bite of food or water daring this time he charges to tear at the throat of any rival bull who chances to come too near.
If any wife shows the least quality of fickleness and seems too inclined to waddle away, he lurches at her with a roar to strike terror in her soul.
If the threat is not sufficient to curb her, he seizes her by the scruff of the neck and hurls her bodily back among his consorts.
In size he is five times the weight of any one of his wives, and he has a strength and power to prove that might is right.
The bull fur seal does not come to breeding age until about six years.
The female is mature the second year and gives birth to a jet-black pup by the end of the third year.
Nature has equipped the mother seal with two reproductive organs.
In this way she starts having another baby almost as soon as she gives birth to her first.
I know of no case of a seal having twins, however, and have not heard of one.
Returning to the village in a drizzling rain late one afternoon, I rounded the corner of an old building and bumped squarely into Santa Claus.
It was plain to see that no feathered pillow rounded out his form.
A long, gray beard, a tousled gray head topped with a little narrow-rimmed hat, and the most genial smile in the world made me feel that surely this was the famous gentleman in person.
"Hello, do you live here?" I gasped, resting the tripod on the ground.
He gave a genial grunt and with a sweep of his right hand said something I couldn't understand.
We were stood beside the old Russian church, and it's then I realized he was not Santa Claus after all, but the priest stationed there to administer to the native Aleuts!