Smart Sea Lion

C404, a cute, whiskered sea lion with soft brown eyes and a furry little head, is so smart that the U.S. government cannot figure out a way to deter his insatiable eating habits or his insistence on his place of residence.

C404 has been huddling close to the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River and has been eating all the salmon in sight. He has apparently figured out how to get inside the fish ladders that help the fish swim over the dam. Government engineers have gone to extreme measures to protect the already endangered salmon, installing grated exclusion gates and trying firecrackers, rockets, and rubber bullets, but nothing has worked.

What is worse is that it appears that C404 is leading a pack of more than 100 buddies to the dam so that they too can munch on the salmon and have a good laugh at the expense of the federal government.