In Murmansk, the northern Russian town, an aquarium was looking for humans to become foster parents of a baby harp seal. The cub was rejected his family because he was born grey, not white. Aw! The Agence France-Press reported that "applicants would need a bathtub, salt water for the cub to splash around in and 100 grammes (3.5 ounces) of fish per day, for the moment," until the seal was fully grown (harp seals are born white then turn grey) and would be accepted by his family. That got Gothamist thinking, "Hey, we have a tub, we can buy fish, and we always have salt. We want to have a foster seal cub!" even though it would surely violate some building codes, but given that a man was able to hide a tiger in his apartment, we think we could handle a seal cub.

And Gothamist will look for any excuse to re-run this harp seal photograph from NY Times photographer Suzanne DeChillo. Gothamist went to the downtown pier where this seal had been spotted a few days after the article, but, alas, we couldn't find him. Did anyone have lucky seeing the seal?