Seal pup found in back garden 'very poorly'

A three-week-old seal pup that was found in a back garden four miles (6.4km) from the sea has a "long road to recovery", the RSPCA said.

The pup was found in Terrington St Clement in Norfolk on 19 December.

The RSPCA believed it travelled up a drainage ditch in the hope of finding water or food.

It was taken to the charity's East Winch Wildlife Centre, where staff said it was still being cared for in an isolation unit.

Centre manager Alison Charles said the pup, which has been named Anwar, was "still very thin and poorly".

She said: "He is now eating on his own, but he needs to gain a lot more weight and improve his fitness before we can consider releasing him back to the wild.

"It will be a long road to recovery for him and it may still be a number of weeks, or even months, before we can release him."

RSPCA collection officer Naemi Kilbey previously said the seal was found in a garden in an area surrounded by agricultural farmland and "there was definitely no sign of the sea or a beach".

She said the ditch had only two inches of water in it "so this poor pup must have just kept trying to travel further and further down in the hope of finding water or food".