A male sea lion that rescuers in San Pedro have named Confetti after it was found in Ballona Creek was on the mend Friday, despite the fact the sea mammal has two bullets in his skull.<\/p>\n
The sea lion was fished out of Ballona Creek, a channeled stream that empties into the ocean near Marina del Rey, on Jan. 5 and found to be suffering from the potentially fatal bacterial infection leptospirosis, which affects the kidneys.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis blood work also showed concerning liver abnormalities,\u201d according to a Facebook post by the Marine Mammal Care Center, which is rehabilitating the animal. \u201cOur veterinary experts started him on supportive medications and antibiotics. He was also given fluids to help with dehydration. \u201d<\/p>\n
Confetti is clearly a survivor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncidentally, skull X-rays taken during Confetti\u2019s initial exams showed that he has two bullets in his head, indicating that this was actually the second time he had narrowly escaped death,\u201d according the center\u2019s post, which said it is not unusual for sea lions to be shot, sometimes by fishers upset over the critters pilfering their catch.<\/p>\n
Confetti was listless and uninterested in eating fish, until about four days after being brought in when he became more alert \u201cand started moving around,\u201d the center reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn day seven, he successfully chased and ate live fish. And by day eight, he was eating the herring he was offered multiple times a day,\u201d according to the center, which offered thanks to compassionate supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis resilience offers hope after a very tough year for sea lions in 2025,\u201d the Facebook post stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A male sea lion that rescuers in San Pedro have named Confetti after it was found in Ballona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[73082,73083,42340,131,133,132,19275],"class_list":{"0":"post-146824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-bullets","9":"tag-confetti","10":"tag-lion","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-recovering"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}