What would you do if you found a tiny baby seal in a harbor and discovered that his mother lay dead nearby, apparently having been shot? George Swallow had that very opportunity on a beautiful Maine day on Bethel Point in May 1971. An animal lover, George did what came naturally. He brought the seal home and put him into the bathtub to figure out what to do next.

The seal wouldn’t drink warm milk, but it would eat ground-up fish mash. George’s wife Alice played along for a couple of days, but then she’d had enough. The family needed to use the bathtub, and the baby seal needed another home. Eager to keep peace in the family, George carried the seal down to the pond near their house, and the seal happily swam around. George put up a pup tent with a wire fence around it for the seal to stay in at night. George named the seal Hoover because of the amount of fish he consumed every day.

George and Hoover totally bonded over the next few weeks. In fact, Hoover would get out of the pond and make his way up to the house and bang on the back door, indicating it was feeding time. Hoover even learned a few phrases, like,” Hey, how are ya?” And, “Get over here, stupid,” which he’d heard George say several times. Neighborhood kids would visit to wheel Hoover around in a wheelbarrow, one of his favorite activities.

One time George took Hoover in his car to go to Black’s Hardware in downtown Brunswick. While George was in the store, Hoover managed to get out of the car and bang on the front door of the store, much to the horror of the other customers.

Wait…is this a real story? Actually, yes it is. I heard about it thanks to Katy Kline, a volunteer for Twice Told Tales in Brunswick. She told me about an older gentleman who had recently come into the store to see if they had a copy of the book, “Hoover the Seal, and George.” The man (David Sparks) said that he had provided the illustrations for the book. She said that they would check around and get back to him. They called him the next day, happy to report that a copy of the book had been put on line, and that they would sell it to him at a greatly reduced price.

I had the good fortune to meet with David Sparks and his delightful wife Sarah in their home in Topsham, but first, “What became of Hoover?”

Well, after a few months George and Alice decided that Hoover had become too big and too expensive to feed, so they took him down to the New England Aquarium at the end of the summer. At first, Hoover, apparently missing his Maine home, didn’t eat much so they called George who rushed down to the Aquarium to give Hoover a good talking to. That did the trick, and Hoover ultimately made peace with his new home and made a new family with his mate Lucy. At one point, a veterinary student who was doing a project at the Aquarium heard a gruff voice saying, “Hey, how are ya?” And…”Gi’ me a quarter.” It was Hoover, strutting his verbal stuff. He could even say his own name.

Hoover, one of the first known harbor seals to actually speak, gained some notoriety. He was featured in articles in “Reader’s Digest” and the “New Yorker” and even made an appearance on Good Morning, America. Hoover died in 1985 at the age of 14.

I asked David Sparks, now age 85, how he happened to meet George Swallow and did he get to meet Hoover. Turns out that David did plumbing work for George. “I loved it when George would call with a plumbing problem,” says David, “because then I could get to see Hoover. I’d get to the house and ask George where Hoover was and he’d yell down to the pond, ‘Get over here, stupid!’ and the seal would come up to the door. I’d pat him, just like you’d pat a dog, and he loved it.”

After George died, his wife Alice decided to write a book entitled, “Hoover the Seal, and George.” She knew that David Sparks was a talented artist, so she asked him to illustrate it.

David Sparks has been a prolific artist since his childhood days. “I’d doodle in class, and the teachers would scold me, because they didn’t think I was paying attention, although I was.” He showed me some of his fine work, ranging from spectacular paintings and exquisite drawings to precisely crafted made-to-scale boats and lifelike decoys. Some of his fine work has been bought by collectors around the world.

“How did you learn to do this?” I asked David. He simply shrugged and said,

“I don’t know. I’ve always been an artist. It just comes naturally to me.” Sadly, David isn’t able to do much art these days, because his vision is failing. But you know that he would if he could.

So there you have it, a touching story offered in the dead of winter at a time when we could all use a little warm sunshine. Thanks to Katy Kline and Twice Told Tales for their pitch-perfect customer service for David Sparks. Thanks to David Sparks for telling me of his encounters with Hoover and for his life’s work of creating great art. And thanks to George Swallow for saving a baby seal from near death and putting him on the road to recovery and fame.

(NOTE: Go to Cranberry Horn Cemetery on Cundy’s Harbor Road in Harpswell, if you’d like to see George Swallow’s headstone which features an illustration by David Sparks of George and Hoover looking admiringly at each other.)

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns. dtreadw575@aol.com.