The Sea Lion King

If birds, apes and even stingrays can rise up against mankind, then why not sea lions?

As AP recently pointed out, the creatures have been responsible for a recent spate of attacks along the California coastline:

"In the most frightening of the recent episodes, a single rogue sea lion bit 14 swimmers this month and chased 10 more out of the water at San Francisco's Aquatic Park, a sheltered lagoon that adjoins the bay. At least one victim suffered multiple puncture wounds.

"In Southern California in June, a sea lion charged several people on Manhattan Beach, then bit a man before waddling into the water and swimming away. And in Berkeley, a woman was hospitalized in the spring after a sea lion took a chunk out of her leg."

I can't help but wonder if this is the sort of thing that woolly mammoths or saber-toothed tigers said to each other (in their cute animalistic language, of course) in the Pleistocene Age about those newfangled human beings: You know, beasts making mental notes to themselves how these ex-apes, ever since walking erect, were starting to get a bit more aggressive, a bit more standoffish, a bit more cocky with their clubs and opposable thumbs and whatnot.

And then look what happened; we went and conquered the planet.

Hundreds of years from now, will this rash of attacks be remembered as the inchoate stages of the sea-lion revolution? Is it time to take preemptive measures?

Just a thought.