Guest Blog By Think Wild Volunteer, Heather McNeil
On a soft and lovely spring morning, Rowan the Golden (my golden retriever) and I were trekking along the Deschutes River. After Rowan’s brief dip and slurp in the water he shook, splattering droplets on my legs, then enthusiastically threw himself into the bitterbrush and rolled. He lolled his tongue and grinned, as only a Golden can grin. I glanced away from his entertaining antics out toward the river and that’s when I saw them.
Two river otters.
When I was young I read Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell. It is the author’s poetic autobiographical account of his life in an abandoned lighthouse keeper’s cottage on Camusfeárna in Scotland, and his relationships with Mijbil, the frisky otter he brought back from Iraq, and, later, Edal from West Africa. Maxwell was a complicated and unhappy man, but his three books about otters (The Rocks Remain and Raven Seek Thy Brother are the sequels to Ring…) mesmerized me with their wildness, humor, and tragedy. I cried uncontrollably at the murder of Mij.
Ever since I have been fascinated with river otters. They are curious creatures, always snuffling and cavorting about. Play seems to be the purpose of their lives, as they slide down embankments, romp across fields, and tumble with each other, rolling about like liquid chocolate. So when I looked over at the river and saw two of them slipping off of rocks into the water, then dipping underwater to grab snails or crawdads, then resurfacing to lift their heads and chomp on their catch, I could hardly breathe I was so delighted.
I immediately put Rowan on leash (from September-May dogs can be off leash where we were hiking) so there was no chance of him investigating these new-to-him creatures. We just watched, following along as they gamboled on the bank, occasionally grooming their slick coats, followed by slipping back into the water to drift, dive, and devour. I took many videos of their antics, and I gave thanks I live in central Oregon, where my daily hikes have resulted in encounters with regal bald eagles, skittery golden-mantled ground squirrels, scolding chickarees (Douglas squirrels), and now—oh, happy day!—river otters.
I have always known the Deschutes River is home to river otters, based on visiting the High Desert Museum when I first came here to interview for a job with the library, as well as hearing from others about their sightings. I have had other encounters, including feeding one on my lap at a marine zoo in New Zealand and watching one scramble across the sand, then plunge into the ocean off the coast of Orcas Island in Washington. But this was home, and this was wild, and this was perfect.
Imagine my joy/concern when I learned that Think Wild recently began caring for two river otter pups, found by a park ranger in Cove Palisades State Park. Unfortunately, they are unable to give the pups the long-term care they need for rehabilitation and release since they do not have an appropriate infrastructure for aquatic mammals. Yet.
According to Think Wild’s website, “Think Wild is accepting donations and naming sponsorships to build an aquatic mammal enclosure on their 4-acre campus for the rehabilitation of otters and beavers. The organization has enclosure guidelines, blueprints, and care protocols, but needs funds to start the estimated $35,000 project.” I probably don’t need to say it, but I hope you will strongly consider making a donation. You’ll be glad you did as it is much more satisfying than political donations that go who knows where for who knows what. This will make a difference right here in Central Oregon for orphaned or injured beavers, muskrats, and—oh, happy day!—river otters.
In my house is a plaque that says, “Once upon a time there was a girl who really loved otters. It was me. The end.” Now I am rereading Maxwell’s book, finding delight again in his descriptions of the joy of being an otter.
“Otters are extremely bad at doing nothing. That is to say that they cannot, as a dog does, lie still and awake; they are either asleep or entirely absorbed in play or other activity. If there is no acceptable toy…they will, apparently with the utmost good humour, set about laying the land waste. There is, I am convinced, something positively provoking to an otter about order and tidiness in any form, and the greater the state of confusion that they can create about them the more contented they feel.”
“He rejoiced in the waves; he would hurl himself straight as an arrow right into the great roaring grey wall of an oncoming breaker and go clean through it as if it had neither weight nor momentum; he would swim far out to sea through wave after wave until the black dot of his head was lost among the distant white manes, and more than once I thought that some wild urge to seek new lands had seized him and that he would go on swimming west into the Sea of the Hebrides and that I should not see him again.”
Keep on trekkin’.
