Originale

Near Aurora, Ore., Farmhand Bert Jeskey heard a boar-like bellowing from the pasture soon after sunrise. Investigating, he found an eight-foot, 800-lb., slithering, legless hulk that reared up on flippers at sight of him and lunged six feet at a thrust. Since the Pudding River was a mile and a half away and the Pacific Ocean 135 miles away by water, Jeskey refused to believe that it was a sea lion until State Police arrived and told him it was famed Sergeant Finnegan of the Oregon State Police.

Week before the sea lion, having quit the Pacific for the Columbia River, ar rived rollicking in the tributary Willamette River off Oregon City, was stopped there by the falls. Chasing carp and salmon, it delighted State Police by fouling the gill nets of salmon poachers, was christened Sergeant Finnegan. Prevented from getting any rest by Oregon City crowds, it humped itself onto a fisherman's house boat, peered in a window and got three charges of buckshot in the face and neck, blinding one eye. It finally climbed a fish ladder beside the falls, roistered on up the Willamette, switched to the Pudding River and then started cross-country through Farmer Alben Erickson's pasture.

It took police three hours to lasso and truss Sergeant Finnegan. By that time surrounding schools had sent 25 busloads of school children to learn about sea lions, and a sea lion expert had pointed out that Sergeant Finnegan was a female. She was renamed Mrs. Finnegan or Judy O'Grady. A U. S. geodetic survey truck took Mrs. Finnegan on a triumphal ride across the State toward the Pacific, stopping at gas stations to hose and exhibit her. When she was dumped onto the beach at Nelscott, she again took an unconventional line in refusing to go into the water. After an hour and a half she indifferently slipped away into a rising tide.

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