“Trust me, it’s Chonkers,” the girl said, snapping her gum, a cluster of other preteens in her wake as they beelined toward Pier 39’s K-Dock. “We’re going to know it when we see him.”
Staring at the blubbery pile of barking, yawning pinnipeds lounging in front of us, I’m not so sure. I start to think that if I believe it enough, any reasonably large sea lion could be him.
It’s around lunchtime on a recent Thursday, and the girl’s remark is the only time I’ve heard anyone utter the animal celebrity’s name since a photographer and I went out on “Chonkers Watch.” The lone exception was one other reporter I spotted darting through the sea lion viewing area, desperately trying to find anyone who would comment on him. “Who?” one woman asked, shivering in her freshly purchased Fisherman’s Wharf hoodie.
As of Sunday, it’s been days since the sea lion the size of a Prius has been seen at the San Francisco tourist attraction, dwarfing his fellow sunbathers and drawing an international legion of fans. This makes sense: A big animal surrounded by a bunch of smaller, lookalike animals is just funny. It tickles a primal part of the brain. Yet what surprised me was why, in a year that’s already seen a coyote swimming to Alcatraz and a historic avian flu outbreak spread to California marine mammals, people seemed to care now more than ever…