The Utterly Delightful Otter

Given the disparate living arrangements of man and otter, it was never easy to associate intimately with the critter, even when otters were plentiful. Opportunities to do so now are more rare than the rare beasts themselves. Still, there may be no other animals which have enjoyed such a good press. From Thornton W. Burgess to Walt Disney to Gavin Maxwell, mammalian publicists have given them the highest marks for appearance, playfulness and affability. Good-natured and amusing best sums up the popular notion of the otter.

This opinion prevails despite the fact that the native otter (Lutra canadensis) belongs to the weasel family, many members of which are regarded as disagreeable and vicious. After wolverines, otters are the largest inland weasels of North America, weighing up to 30 pounds and attaining a body length of up to 2½ feet. (Pacific sea otters may weigh 80 pounds and the giant Brazilian otter can measure more than seven feet from nose to tail.) Like all the weasels, otters are predators, but specialized aquatic ones with webbed feet, powerful rudderlike tails and dense, insulating fur. They are stronger and more stylish swimmers than beavers, muskrats or minks and are at least the equals of some fish, having been observed overtaking trout. However, like other predators, excepting ourselves, otters show no inclination for sport or thrill hunting and generally feed upon what is most abundant and easiest to catch—turtles, snakes, crustaceans, suckers, carp and such. When opportunities present themselves, otters can take a duckling, rabbit or muskrat. They also forage on the roots and stalks of aquatic plants.

Out of the water, otters aren't particularly graceful, loping along with the humped-back gait peculiar to many of the weasels, but they are swifter afoot than man. Ordinarily they aren't terrestrial hunters, but they frequently make fairly long overland journeys of exploration or migration, sometimes crossing considerable heights of land dividing watersheds. As a rule they den in burrows delved by other mammals, but, at least in the tule marshes of California, they have been reported to construct tepeelike shelters out of reeds. Pups, up to five in a litter, are born in the spring and usually hunt with their dams for most of the next year. Only rarely do dog otters stay with the family.

Being effective predators and so strong and agile that they themselves are almost immune from natural predation, otters, if they are in a reasonably productive environment, apparently have a good bit of time on their paws. They utilize it by taking long naps, sunbathing and investigating—out of pure curiosity, it seems—interesting creatures and things, such as people and boats, which they find in their neighborhoods. Also, they certainly look as if they enjoy sport: Young otters engage in taglike behavior, and they bat, throw and catch bits of buoyant debris with their very manipulative paws. A notable characteristic of otters is their habit of making slides on mud- or snowbanks and using them with every appearance of pleasure. A family group will occupy itself for hours at a time swooshing down one of these runs, emerging from the water and scrambling back up the incline to repeat the trip. Behavioral purists sometimes object to calling such activity play, but nobody has offered a more descriptive term.

As is the case with all other bloods, we know next to nothing about the inner lives of otters—their emotional and cerebral responses, their hopes, fears and ambitions, so to speak. Objectively, there is no more reason to regard them as wet, jovial hobbits than there is for attributing sagacity to owls, nobility to lions or viciousness to wolverines. Nevertheless, why we feel as we do about otters is perhaps easier to understand than are most snap anthropomorphic opinions. When we meet them, otters look and generally behave, according to our standards, like terrific folks with whom it would be a great pleasure to become better acquainted. The more dismal the circumstances, the more terrific they are.

One summer past I had occasion to investigate the latest in a series of environmental crises that had beset Florida's Everglades. This one had to do with plans of public agencies and private entrepreneurs to build a jetport nearby, which, it was feared, might have a bad effect on the quantity and quality of water entering this extraordinary jungle. Being an environmental war correspondent, I went to this combat zone.

A Park Service naturalist provided me with a canoe and sketchy directions for reaching a place called Lard Can Camp, 10 miles or so into the Everglades, where he thought there would be enough dry land to pitch a tent. Though the camp appeared on a map describing fun canoe trails in the park, neither this Fed nor any of his colleagues had been there in some time. On the morning I left, he gave me a pep talk and a roll of orange engineer's ribbon, suggesting that if I should happen to find the camp he would appreciate it if I would mark my return route so that he and others could follow it.

It was July and the temperature in the thickets, night and day, was about 100°. The humidity was about the same. It had been a wet month and whatever their future, the Everglades were then in good shape, there being no genuinely dry places anywhere along my route. Bugs were doing marvelously well. Great armadas of mosquitoes and deerflies were reinforced by flotillas representing, I had the impression, every known species of biting insect and very likely a few undescribed ones. In consequence I spent nearly all of my four-day trip in the canoe, the floorboards of which were awash with a solution of water, mud and spent insect dope. I used my tent as a kind of antibug envelope, unrolling it at night under the thwarts. After half an hour or so of being so contained in waterproof nylon, I felt the way chicken livers look in a plastic bag that has been in a supermarket case well beyond the sell-by date. I had to come out periodically, trading fear of suffocation for that of being punctured and sucked.

Eventually I reached Lard Can Camp, which afforded some ego satisfaction but not much relief, because the hummock it was on was then under a foot or so of water and occupied by a lively community of cottonmouths. The method for reaching this spot is easier to describe than it was to execute. There was a narrow, open channel that wound tortuously through the mangrove thickets. Every half mile or so this passage would open into a small pond created by wallowing alligators or other natural forces. From most of these ponds three or four leads would twist off into the mangrove, but only one was the continuing channel. The right one was determined by making a random choice and following it for a time: If it pinched off in the thickets, the only thing was to turn around, go back to the pond and try again. Doing this promotes sympathy for the work of rats in laboratory mazes—and also contemplation of the true meaning of serendipity.

Sitting early in the morning at one of these intersections, sweating and itching, I was welcomed to the pond by a pair of otters that surfaced within a long paddle's length of the canoe and began to disport themselves around it. Again, to emphasize reality, I have no idea what they were up to, whether they were displaying curiosity, fear, hostility or territoriality and what, if any, was their opinion of me. However, they looked and acted merry. Among other things, they were very vocal in the attractive manner of their kind, popping up beside the canoe and chirping, twittering and chittering in high, sweet tones. I can remember thinking that in a bizarre way the sounds were like those I had heard at high school proms while waiting outside the powder room for my date.