Eric Nies

If injured animals normally go to a zoo to recover, then Panchita, a Galapagos Sea Lion, is no ordinary animal.

Panchita is, instead, one smart and lucky animal, with a taste for the good life.

When the mammal found herself injured with deep cuts all over her body after being caught in a net in the ocean, she washed up not on rough shores, but at a hotel, according to Animal Advocacy, a Phoenix-based organization.

Animal advocates there who found Panchita spent the next three months nursing her back to health.  Panchita, now pregnant and expecting her baby sea lion any day, goes out to sea every day and then returns to the hotel to rest.

In this photo, Panchita is captured post-ocean swim, improbably lying next to Eric Nies, the star of the first season of the MTV reality show, "The Real World."  Nies provided the photo to Animal Advocacy through the Seals of Nam, a worldwide initiative that aims to "bring the stench of the Namibian seal massacre to the nostrils of an indignant world," according to its website.