Seal with price on its head

STAFF at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary are hoping a seal keeps its head down in the next three weeks. They fear it will be shot.

Last-ditch efforts to save a seal with a price on its head were unsuccessful when on Saturday he could not be found.

The seal has been stealing salmon for some months from the Camel estuary and one of the three fishermen whose nets the seal plunders has decided enough is enough and permission to shoot the seal has been obtained.

In their efforts to save the seal, the rescue team, including members of the seal sanctuary, British Divers Marine Life rescue and diving clubs from Carn Brea, laid nets at the mouth to Padstow's inner harbour hoping that the seal, who had been fed fish and chips by holidaymakers there the night before, would return.

An all-night vigil followed but the seal did not appear.

On Sunday a boat with a team of divers and a large draw net scoured the estuary but failed to find the seal. Now little can be done and he is likely to be shot.

"Let's hope he keeps his head down for the next three weeks," said fisherman Trevor Platt, who said the salmon season would then be over.

Crash hat saves boy cyclist, six

By Stephen Ivall

A CRASH HAT saved the life of a six-year-old Penryn boy when he was knocked off his bike by a hit-and-run driver.

James Ralph of Glasney Place was sent sprawling when he and members of his cycling family were "cut up" by a van driver on the main Falmouth Penryn road.

Young James suffered facial injuries, including a badly cut lip, but he was saved from serious head injuries by his crash hat. "There is no doubt it saved his life," said his mother, Mrs Theresa Ralph.

Birds beheaded in mindless massacre

POLICE are warning bird owners to keep their birds secure after 42 exotic pigeons were beheaded or strangled over the weekend during an horrific attack at a Falmouth property.

The owner of the show birds, Mr Les Evans, returned home from a holiday at the weekend to learn his pigeons had been slaughtered in the shed which housed them.

The 12 tumblers and 30 fantails were discovered by the owner's daughter-in-law on Saturday afternoon. They had either been decapitated or strangled and left in the shed.