Signed, seal-ed, undelivered

HAVING A WANDER: Rural mailman Gordon Wyeth finds a seal up Whakatomotomo Road, Pirinoa, South Wairarapa.

A baby seal on an inland pilgrimage has so far eluded Department of Conservation officers who were tracking it down.

Rural postie Gordon Wyeth spotted the pup six kilometres from the South Wairarapa coast, while doing his rounds on Tuesday morning.

He had been driving along Whakatomotomo Road, in Pirinoa, when he pulled up at a letter box and saw something moving in the grass.

"I thought it was a rat or something," Mr Wyeth said.

"It was a baby seal, miles away from sea. It was up by letter box 620, so that's 6kms up. It was by the side of the road, not on the coast in any way.

"It was absolutely bizarre. I was on the phone, and I saw something moving, and thought, what the hell is that?"

Mr Wyeth said he had no idea how the seal would have come to be so far from the coast.

He took some photographs of the pup and then drove off, resuming his deliveries.

A short time later he by chance ran into the DoC officers, who then went to investigate the sighting.

DoC officer Wiremu Grace said they went to where the seal had been spotted but only found an oily patch of grass.

"It was either hiding really well or it had jumped into the creek and swum away.

"There was a stain on the grass that was oily which may be where a seal could've been lying. We had a scout out for it but it was nowhere to be seen. We looked around for about 20-odd minutes, the three of us."

A seal so far from the sea was "very uncommon", he said.

"It's only small and that it would be away from other seals, it's a bit weird.

"They have turned up in odd places before but this is up too far from saltwater."

Mr Grace said the seal might have swum up the Turanganui Creek, from Lake Onoke.

He said the oily spot of grass where they thought the seal was spotted was 20 or 30 metres from the river, beside the gravel road.

"It either got its bearings screwed up, it's gotten a bit lost obviously and has gone the wrong way, or someone's picked it up and taken it and dropped it off.

"My guess is that it swum up the stream," said Mr Grace, who thought the seal may have been "getting a bashing out at sea and might have been looking for calmer water".