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CALIFORNIA

Sea lion joins walk-a-thon

CORTE MADERA — He has flippers instead of feet — and certainly no sneakers or hiking boots. But that didn’t stop a sea lion from joining schoolchildren on a walk-a-thon.

The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School next to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.

“He did a whole lap,” said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and Web communications at the private school.

It was the latest brush with humans for the 1-year-old sea lion, called Astro by staffers at the Marin Headlands-based Marine Mammal Center. Astro’s mother abandoned him at Ano Nuevo Island in June, so biologists bottle-fed the pup. They released the adolescent on April 25 with a radio tag.

About a week ago, he swam under the Golden Gate Bridge to the shores of Corte Madera. The Marine Mammal Center picked him up and released him in the Farallon Islands. But he returned again Friday, just in time for the walk-a-thon. The center will try to find him a permanent home, possibly the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, which keeps threatened Steller sea lions.

FLORIDA

Wildfire evacuees wait to go home

LAKE CITY — Authorities briefly reopened two highways crossing northern Florida into Georgia yesterday before dense wildfire smoke forced them to again halt traffic, while hundreds of Florida residents waited to return to their threatened homes.

Officials said yesterday that the wildfire that had raced through the Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia and into Florida had charred more than 233,700 acres — or about 365 square miles — since it was started by lightning a week ago. Officials warned that storms in the forecast yesterday could bring either fire-drenching rain or fire-sparking lightning.

Authorities reopened 90 miles of Interstates 75 and 10 for a few hours yesterday morning after wind helped push the heavy smoke away from the highways. But they were later forced to close 35 miles of I-75 from the Florida-Georgia state line to Lake City, Fla., as well as a 40-mile stretch of I-10 in Florida, from Live Oak to Sanderson.

About 570 residents were not being allowed to return to 150 homes evacuated between I-10 and the Florida-Georgia line.

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