'We Assumed He Was Here to Try the Clam Pizza'

An underweight baby seal is getting all the fish it could want at an aquarium after being rescued off the streets of Connecticut near Yale University. The seal was found Sunday afternoon by the New Haven Police Department after a passerby called to report spotting a potentially injured seal, according to officer Christian Bruckhart, a police department spokesperson. The seal was more than 1,000 feet from the nearest river. "We assumed he was here to try the clam pizza but I can't confirm that, we're just happy he's safe," Bruckhart tells the AP.

"We deal with some weird stuff all the time, but this is certainly out of the ordinary even for us," Bruckhart tells the New York Times. "Maybe we should just start keeping mackerel in the cruisers." Officers stayed with the seal until it was able to be moved to the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut, for rehabilitation. Officers visited the seal on Tuesday at the aquarium, where staffers were working to get it up to an ideal weight so the animal could be released. They plan to release the seal in a safer spot, possibly along the eastern shoreline, but not too far from where it was found, says Bruckhart.

Mystic Aquarium animal rescue technician Francesca Battaglia tells WTNH that the gray seal, believed to be five to six weeks old, was spotted outside Shell & Bones Oyster Bar and Grill in New Haven on Saturday. It was moved to a beach but just made its way back to the middle of the city, likely working off instincts to get away from water and larger seals that could hurt it. "He's a young animal. And so sometimes those first few weeks without mom can be a little tough on these guys," Battaglia tells NBC Connecticut. (More seal stories.)