Rubbish the sea lion pup is just one of hundreds of baby sea lions that have been stranded in California this year, thanks to warmer-than-usual ocean waters and a resulting lack of food sources. But he's the only one (so far) that's waddled onto the streets of San Francisco and taken a nap under a car. Rubbish's cosmopolitan taste gained him national fame, but what happens to a sea lion pup after he's rescued from the mean streets of the Marina District?
The sea lion's wanderings earned him a return ticket to Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center, a rescue and rehabilitation center where he'd already spent several months earlier this year, thanks to a stranding in Santa Barbara. That's where the pup earned the name Rubbish — a reference to an exclamation of disgust in the Harry Potter books — before being released into the wild March 23. Rubbish lasted only five weeks on his own before he showed up in San Francisco, suffering from malnutrition.
Laura Sherr, a spokesperson for the MMC, said Rubbish is now hanging out in a pool with other sea lions his age, including Rawr, Tod-Diddle, Codlet, and Minden. He's getting fattened up on a "mash of herring and nutritional supplements" in the hopes that he can return to the wild.
As to whether Rubbish remembers his previous time at the Hogwarts for sea lions, Sherr says, "That is not possible for us to know."
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