Wandering seal leads police on slow-speed chase to law firm in England

Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Police in England said a seal wandering near the center of a town led officers on one of their "slower pursuits" when it fled to a nearby lawyer's office.

Humberside Police said the seal was spotted underneath a parked car in Grimsby early Thursday morning, and the animal fled when officers approached.

"Unfortunately, the seal didn't want to hang around, resulting in one of our slower pursuits," police tweeted.

Personnel from Cleethorpes Wildlife Rescue were summoned to the scene and were able to wrangle the seal outside of the Wilkin and Chapman law firm's building.

Wildlife rescuers said they do not know how the seal ended up in the middle of Grimsby.

"We would be hopeful that there was no human factor in his location, although it has been known elsewhere in the U.K. to happen," a spokesman for the group told Grimsby Live.

"We know he couldn't have come in via Grimsby Docks due to the large water turbines outside B&M. The only other way we can imagine is that it's traveled with the flow of water along the river and got lost from another connection to the estuary," the spokesman said.

The seal, nicknamed Oreo, was taken to the Mablethorpe Seal Sanctuary.