[url]http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/kpix/20020620/lo/3659_1.html[/url]

Sea Lion Breaches Security at SFO

The latest security headache at SFO has fins and a taste for fresh fish.

A sea lion managed to get through security at San Francisco International Airport, crossing two runways and a concrete tarmac. Officials didn't discover the intruder until it got to a terminal.

The sea lion is now under care of the Marine Mammal Center in Marin. But the question now is: how safe is the airport? How good is security when a mammal -- as big as a professional basketball player -- can penetrate it?

"The mammal was very low-profile, had no metal objects on it," said SFO spokesman Ron Wilson. "We do have a ... ground surveillance radar, which will pick up metal objects that are moving about the airfield."

Radar didn't spot him -- and neither did the people in the towers, who are supposed to keep an eye out there -- as he came out of the bay in the dark, and lumbered across two runways and two taxiways early Tuesday morning. Luckily, there weren't any airplanes out there at the time.

The sea lion appears hard to miss, at 280 lbs. and close to seven feet long.

"Perhaps because he was disoriented, when he came out of the water, instead of going back in, he just kept coming inland," said the Marine Mammal Center's Kathryn Zagzebski.

He was finally detected at American Airlines gate 64.

"You have to reflect back on security. What if it was a person that tried to do that?" Wilson said. "That is why we are now considering fencing the perimeter of the airport."

The sea lion is getting medical attention, and it has a new name: Runway.

That's why I fly out of Oakland now.  Just so I can avoid all the wildlife on the penninsula.  

The authorities should detain that law-breaking sea lion, without any charges or due process, until the war on terror is ended.
I wouldn't be a bit suprised to learn this sea lion is Al-Queda trained.

Oakland has "wildlife" of its own to worry about.

True, although the airport isn't part of the zoo.

Since sea lions are mammals, they're lucky it didn't flip out and start chopping off heads. [%|]