Having white-knuckled through America’s unhinged 250th birthday party, maybe you’ve been wondering what it might be like to live in a place where the chaos is more car-crushing than soul-crushing, one where the bellowing, camera-hogging creature throwing its weight around isn’t the president of the United States but, instead, a 2,200-pound sea mammal.
Residents of the Southern Tasmania city Hobart can probably tell you what it’s like, because for the past half-decade its seaside streets have been disrupted by twice-yearly visits from Neil, a male Southern elephant seal with a deceptively sweet face and the chaotic panache of the “Jackass” cast.
