Otter

“ There are some, indeed, that never leave the water night nor day; yet no one calls them amphibious birds. I have seen the Otter, in his free, unfettered, and unmolested condition, both in the sea and the river, go into the water, and disappear many a time, and I have often watched for his reappearance. ”

“ Nothing could exceed the elegance and ease with which the otter performed the most extraordinary and complicated evolutions in pursuit of his prey, his long, lithe body, pliant and supple as an eel’s, twisting and twining in every direction as the fish darted hither and thither, or swept in rapid circles in its efforts to escape. ”

“ They lingered there week after week till the weather changed, but on the night of a lurid sunset, rounded the grim promontory which marks the end of all the land, and set their faces towards the marsh. On the way thither the female otter kept biting off the rushes and carrying them in her mouth, and when she reached the mere she at once chose a place in the heart of the reed-bed to make a nest. ”

“ Then the hunters in single file made along the slender stream for the basin below the fall, sporting together till the sun rose over the distant sea and flooded the upland with its beams. The otter, usually observant of the first signs of dawn, seemed not to heed the golden light, even when the cubs began to grow uneasy and to shoot reproachful glances at her for keeping them abroad at so late an hour. ”

“ The common Otter of Europe and America though he moves quickly and actively on land, has webbed toes with only short claws standing out beyond the swimming foot, and he spends the greater part of his life in the river, making his home in a hollow of the bank beneath the overhanging roots of trees. There he may still be seen in many of our English rivers, his soft brown fur shining as he swims along, diving under water for a fish, which he brings out on to the bank to eat, holding it in his fore paws. ”

“ The tedious bend, of which the otters had crossed the neck, now lay behind, and in front stretched the long reach marked by broad sand-banks that the tide was beginning to crawl over. So otter and cubs, after passing two branch creeks, musical with the whistlings of night-feeding birds, came to the deeper water, where hulks rode at their last anchorage, and, farther on, to the landlocked haven in which tall-masted vessels swung to their moorings, and the lights of a little seaport and fishing village winked at one another across the salt waters. ”

“ Could you follow an otter in such a place, you might see him rout out a fish, catch it after a breathless chase, and speed away to the nearest place for eating it. That place may be a den of his own in the bank, or a beaver’s tunnel under the lodge, or a cave under a hummock where the expanding ice crowds up over a half-submerged rock, making a roomy air-chamber in which otter, mink or muskrat may eat or rest in perfect security. The rock offers them a floor, and the roof of ice hides them from all prying eyes. ”

“ But beside the brown otter, a huge shadow came stealing along—the shadow of the giant.
The king stood staring at it, as if he were turned into stone, but the queen snatched the egg from the otter and crushed it between her two hands. And after that the shadow suddenly shrank and was still, and they knew that the giant was dead, because they had found his soul.
Next day they mounted the two horses and rode home again, visiting their friends the brown otter and the hoary hawk and the slim yellow dog by the way. ”

“ Yet though the otter followed the usual trails over the moor, the trackers never once came on a sign of him. The reason is not far to seek. The beds of the river and the streams are for the most part rocky, the shallows and landing-places pebbly, and spits of sand are few and far between. It was on these last that the trackers relied to find the foot-prints, and at dawn they might have been seen bending over them, plying their craft as eagerly as men seeking gold or precious stones. They found nothing, for the otter had never set foot there. ”

“ There, however, the otter stood irresolute. Each water led towards a delectable destination—the one to the salmon pools, the other to her native marsh, with its abundant food-supply and secure hovers among the reed-beds—and which to make for she could not decide, until it struck her that the cubs might never find the outlying water without her. ”

“ They swam as fast as their legs could propel them to the spot whence the call proceeded, and as soon as the otter had landed and licked the face of the skittish little creature awaiting the rivals, he turned to face his enemy. Like two furies they fought in the shallows churned with their incessant movements. ”

“ Had he seen an otter he would by this be crossing the moor to meet the squire and tell, instead of pacing to and fro waiting for the hounds and glancing down now and again towards the spot where he expects to see them. It is full day by this, and river and tributary stream stretch across the purple moorland like golden threads. ‘Grand mornin’. Ah! if we can only find!’ he sighed, as the uncertainty of the sport flashed across his mind. ‘If! But there, man, ’tes no use iffin’. ”

“ The otter, who had shifted his quarters to avoid the drippings from the cliffs, after watching the bird's fishing for a time, began himself to fish. At the end of a long, fruitless quest he landed; but now, in his extremity, no longer careful for his safety, he lay out in the open on a granite boulder. Happily no harm came of it. Through the night he and his mate hunted in the deep water beyond the rock, still without seeing a fin, so that when the sun peeped above the sea the creatures returned to the cliffs in despair. ”

“ Like the small boy with the sled and a snowy hillside, the Otter sometimes indulges in its sliding pastime for an hour at a time, with a keen relish for the sport that is quite evident to all who have ever watched it. ”

“ The longer the otter studied that gray, prowling, shadowy shape, with the wide eyes, the powerful hunched hind-quarters, the long and ripping claws, the less certain he felt of his ability to handle it, the more surely did his fighting lust cool down. ”

“ Close on midnight, when the tide was about half flood, the otter, with the cubs at her side, re-entered the creek in search of flat-fish. Her quest was no easy one, for she had crossed the sandy bottom but once before the fish, becoming aware of the presence of their dreaded enemies, gave up feeding, and buried themselves in the sand. A pair of eyes dotted here and there about the wide bed was all that showed, and it was for this sign of the fish's presence that the otter searched, jerking her head this way and that to scan the ground on each side of her course. ”

“ Although so fierce and savage when attacked, the otter is easily tamed when taken young, and can be taught to catch fish for the service of its master, rather than for the gratification of its own palate.
In the winter when the snow is on the ground, the otter navigates by sliding, and when on the ice he may often be seen to run a few steps and then throw himself on his belly and slide the distance of several feet. They are very fond of playing in the snow, and make most glorious use of any steep snow-covered bank, sloping toward the river. ”

“ In one fastness, however, he was content to linger—the headland between the Gull Rock and the Shark's Fin. There he would stay for days together, held by the drear solitude, the supply of fish, and the snug lying in the caves that honeycombed the cliff, where man never came, and where, whether the wind blew from the east or from the west, the otter, who disliked exposure to it as much as any fox, could always find a recess on the lee side to shelter in. ”

“ Behind one of these a light had just before been burning, where the young squire sat recording the day's sport with his hounds along the stream in which the otter had taught the cubs to fish. But as he wrote he heard the otter whistle. On the instant he dropped his pen, turned down the lamp and, seizing a field-glass, took his seat by the open window. Keen otter-hunter as he was, he was no less keen a naturalist. Deer, foxes, badgers, seals, all interested him, though not to the same degree as the otter. ”

“ A faint whistle sounds up the mere: an otter is out for its nightly raid. As I have observed him this creature is not an arch-enemy of trout. In wanton sport he may mutilate numbers of fish, but his chief diet is the freshwater crayfish. A casual examination of an otter’s hole will prove so much from the appearance of the excreta; and, while you are at such close quarters, note the plenty of fish-life in the pools near by. No further evidence is needed to correct much misjudgment. In the water the otter is graceful; in the meadows he lopes along at great speed when such is necessary. ”

“ This picturesque method of hunting has given place to shooting and clubbing the otter to death as he lies asleep on the rocks. As they come ashore during the fiercest weather, the hunter must brave the most violent storms and perilous surfs to reach the otter's retreat in his frail, but beautiful, bidarka. ”

“ The day proved intensely hot and still, with not a breath to ripple the surface or freshen the stifling air of the brake where the otters lay panting until dusk fell and allowed them to quench their tormenting thirst without fear of detection. ”

“ I had just returned from the morning fishing, and was getting breakfast, when I saw an otter come out into the lake from a cold brook over on the east shore. [36] Grabbing a handful of figs, and some pilot bread from the cracker box, I paddled away after the otter; for that is an animal which one has small chance to watch nowadays. Besides, I had found a den over near the brook, and I wanted to find out, if possible, how a mother otter teaches her young to swim. For, though otters live much in the water and love it, the young ones are afraid of it as so many kittens. ”

“ The sight of their wounds angered the squire, who at once called out: 'Now, men, build a dam, and look lively; that otter shan't live another hour.' All set to work. Except the whipper-in, who had as much as he could do to look after the hounds, every man lent a hand. ”

“ They crowd upon the rocks as thickly as they can, and blink there all day long unless disturbed by the approach of a boat, when they dive clumsily but quickly. Occasionally, one sees an otter, with seal-like head above the surface of the water, swimming swiftly from haunt to haunt in pursuit of the bass ”

“ The otter loves to slide. Up he climbs on the [Pg 13] bank, then down he goes—splash—into the stream. Up he climbs and down he goes—time after time, day after day. There is nothing like a slide, unless it is a cellar-door.
How much of a necessity to the otter is his play, one would like to know—what he would give up for it, and how he would do deprived of it. In the case of Pups, my neighbor’s beautiful young collie, play seems more needful than food. There are no children, no one, to play with him there, so that the sight of my small boys sets him almost frantic. ”

“ We know what that means, "The otter," says the Imp, and we stare about with eyes wider than before, doing our best to imagine in very stir in the bushes or under the banks that we can see his dark body, like a beaver, for he can swim in the water and dive like a fish, and run along the bank as well. But we have never seen him, though we know that he is there. And otters are growing fewer and fewer. Every year men and women with dogs come to hunt them and kill them. Some day there will be no otters left at all. ”

“ The otter is one of the greatest of travellers. He swims the streams for miles or makes long journeys into the hills. On land he usually selects the smoothest, easiest way, but once I saw him descend a rocky precipice with speed and skill excelled only by the bighorn sheep. He has a permanent home range and generally this is large. From his den beneath the roots of a tree, near a stream bank or lake shore, he may [Pg 64] go twenty miles up or down stream; or he may traverse the woods to a far-off lake or cross the watershed to the next stream, miles away. ”

“ For a mile or more we follow the otter’s trail up the lake, slide-jump-jump, slide-jump-jump, as if he were moving to waltz music. “You are taking your time, Keeonekh,” I say; “but you are leaving an uncommonly crooked trail, dodging in and out like a thieving mink; which is not like you or your breed. Why are you at such pains to hide your tracks? Ah, yes, I remember; last night when you passed this way the wolves were howling.”
As a rule the otter travels boldly, being well able to take care of himself ”

“ There are two species, the common otter and the sea otter, which latter is only found in the North Pacific and is now quite rare. Of the common otter there are some three or four varieties, differing only in size and color. The habits of the otter are very little known by the average man, and many of the trappers know little about this animal. They are rambling [Pg 142] animals, traveling the streams and lakes for great distances. They will travel sometimes ten or fifteen miles to visit some certain lake and perhaps will only stay there over night. ”

“ On land the otter moves with a peculiar loping gait. When he comes up out of the water, there is first a little swell on the surface, then his head appears, and if everything is quiet he silently crawls up on a log or bank. When startled, he makes one gliding plunge, and the water closes over him with scarcely a ripple. ”