Comments & Curiosities:

He was just a cute and curious pup. Or so they said. I’m not so sure. Although there is no argument that the sea lion that turned up on the roof of a West Newport apartment building this week was definitely cute and decidedly curious.

In the wee small hours of Thursday morning, Newport Beach resident Mike Kai was awakened by loud barking that sounded just like it was coming from his rooftop, which is a strange place for barking to be.

Kai threw on some clothes and made his way to the roof of his triplex and immediately found the source of the barking — a 32-pound sea lion pup.

He looked at Kai, wasn’t particularly interested then went about his business, poking around the roof. Newport Beach Animal Control was summoned, but not before Kai shot a few pictures and a video of the sea lion-ette on his roof.

“It was sliding around,” Kai said. “It was kind of just cruising around upstairs, climbing on the railing and sliding down the rails. That’s what woke us up.”

Kai wanted to name the pup Andre, but the animal control folks, who apparently like musicals, decided on Fiddler, as in “Fiddler on the Roof.”

It turns out that Fiddler was only one of a number of sea lions that animal control had to fetch from some very strange places on Thursday, by coaxing, cajoling or tempting with a promise of a nice sea bass, quick sautĂŠed and finished with fresh ginger and soy.

And that was when I, being someone who watches way too many crime shows, became suspicious.

When there are a number of terminally cute sea lions on roofs and in doorways on the same morning, how do you know they weren’t trained to go there?

To do what, I don’t know. A burglary ring, drug mules, who knows?

Do you know what seals do during the night? Neither do I. True, when Mike Kai gets to the roof, Fiddler is doing the slip and slide, barking, clapping his flippers, being adorable. But how would anyone know if Fiddler was jiggling doorknobs or casing apartments just before Kai got there? They wouldn’t, that’s how.

Let’s review. Fiddler waddles onshore, does the wiggle-waddle-slide across a hundred yards of sand, makes his away across at least two streets without becoming Flat Fiddler, looks up at four flights of stairs on the outside stairway to Mike Kai’s roof and says, “Oh cool, maybe there’s a fish up there. Probably take, what, 20 minutes to go up those stairs? What the heck. I got nothing until 11 anyway.”

I don’t think so. But here is my question: they can train seals to do the most incredible things — balance a ball on their nose, shoot baskets with their tails, play Trivial Pursuit, all sorts of things.

Could you train a seal to commit crimes? Maybe, maybe not. To find out, I went to the San Diego Zoo’s website. They have a lot of seals in San Diego. Seals like it there.

I found out that training seals is really hard and it takes forever. Almost all their training centers on food, which leads me to believe that I may have been a seal in a previous life.

When they do things right, they get the little fish, when they don’t, they don’t. Every command and response takes repeated sessions over the course of weeks and months, which are like weeks but four times as long.

An untrained seal is called a naĂŻve seal, which is pretty cold I think.

Left on its own, a seal can swim like a speedboat and dive a quarter mile in 5 seconds to snag a small fish that we would never see, but because he can’t honk a bicycle horn with his nose – he’s naïve. Who made up that rule?

Seal class starts with simple tasks like recognizing their trainer and maintaining eye contact, all of which is rewarded with little fishes of course.

The advanced training mostly involves “targets” — objects with which the seal is supposed to do something, including the trainer. The first step is how to recognize the target, then how to approach it, then what to do with it once they get to it or it gets to them.

Does any of that mean that Fiddler was four stories high in West Newport last Thursday for any reason other than being curious and cute? Not necessarily. But if you can teach a seal how to swim backward, catch a beach ball with his flipper and toss it back to his trainer, I’m just saying — who knows what seals do? I mean, besides other seals.

Before we go, some housekeeping. Not like dusting, like making an announcement. If you look for me next Sunday, you will not find me, mostly because I will not be here. I am going to a three-Sunday-a-month schedule through the summer, starting in May.

All right, I will tell you if you must know. I’m taking tuba lessons and a feng shui class, and I need the extra time. Life is a journey, keep your heart and mind open, just because a seal tells you something doesn’t mean it’s true. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].