The Otters’ Tale. Simon Cooper

snapping away from the trunk and falling to the ground. Laid out, the cracked branches look a little like an open pea pod, and at first there would probably only be just enough room for an otter to squeeze inside the fissure in the wood. But in time the timber would start to rot from the inside out, the constant comings and goings of the otters gradually hollowing out the trunk. The bark and cortex, still connected to the mother tree, stay alive even to the extent that the bright green shoots continue to grow up to create a sort of curtain in front of the hollow. It is as natural a hiding place as you’d ever find.

      It was well into the night when Kuschta woke up with a start; something or someone was passing by. She had no reason to be scared, but she was, freezing rigid until the sound faded into the distance before she raised her head to check the hollow. Empty. She pawed at the soft, rotten wood where her mother usually sat. Cold. Cold as if she had never been there. Something wasn’t right. Wishing it wasn’t so, Kuschta stared out at the river for a little while, the landscape bathed in the silver light of a half moon, until she reached a decision – she’d go to find her mother.

      Parting the willow-whip curtain, Kuschta pushed herself out of the hollow and slid into the water. In her mind there was no doubt she would find her mother at the weir pool. It was one of their favourite haunts. As she swam she became more confident in her decision. Familiar landmarks marked the route. The moon lit the way. The weir was not far. Turning the last bend with it just ahead, Kuschta slowed her pace. She half expected to see the silhouette of her mother on the wooden beam that braced the right-hand side of the structure. The two of them often sat there to share the spoils, but tonight it was empty. No matter. Kuschta stopped paddling, letting the current take her along whilst straining her ears for familiar sounds above the regular pounding of the water as it crashed over the weir. Nothing.

      Scrambling up, she took in the whole pool from the vantage point of the beam with one swift movement of her head. The fast plumes of water that washed to the centre of the pool then gathered together to push out and on through the mouth to continue on as one river. The gentle slope of the grassy bank that led down to the water on the far side. The line of alders on the nearside, all gaunt and black against the night sky. All utterly familiar but totally absent of the one thing she sought. Confused and deflated, Kuschta settled down on the beam to wait for her mother to return. Time was her only hope.

      It is probably better that at this point Kuschta doesn’t know what we know, namely that she has been deserted by her mother forever. Deserted is a harsh word, but from such swift and brutal decisions, good will come. It’s just that sometimes it doesn’t seem that way at the time.

      Otters are relatively unusual in the mammal kingdom of Britain, breaking with the norms of reproduction. In the standard way of things, offspring are born in spring, raised in the summer and go their own way by the autumn at the latest. But for otters it is somewhat different, the reproductive cycle being closer to biennial than annual, with the pups, the females in particular, staying with the mother until they are well over a year old. With so much time together, the bond between mother and pups is intense; the father is rarely a factor, moving on soon after mating. Otter pups are truly dependent on the mother; they can’t swim or hunt without being taught. But even when armed with those basics they can’t go it alone. Three months, six months, nine months, a year – they will starve without maternal oversight all the way into young adulthood.

      The family group is everything in the upbringing of an otter. The litter, anywhere from one to four pups, will spend every waking and sleeping hour together with the mother until they go their separate ways. The first schism comes earlier for male pups. Approaching one year of age, he will be as big as his mother, and with increasingly unruly behaviour and becoming more dominant than she would like, the mother takes a stand against her son and drives him away. Shorn of her guidance and protection, this adolescent faces an uncertain future. Travelling alone, he has to fight for his life both in terms of finding a territory to call his own and food to live on. Mature males will care little for his intrusion and other mothers will be fiercely protective of their patch. He will find it hard to rest; the itinerant life will drain his strength as he is constantly moved on. His hunting skills are still evolving; surviving day to day in unfamiliar places is a constant battle. There are plenty for whom the battle is too much, dying of exhaustion and starvation. His sisters will eventually reach a similar fork in their lives.

      Survival, and the search for food to ensure survival, can also determine otters’ habitat. Sometimes the choice of a coastal home is made of necessity, driven along to the mouth of a river in a search either for territory or for food. Otters are very ‘linear’ in their habits and outlook; they rarely stray far from water, preferring to travel great distances along watercourses rather than heading inland. The only common exception to this is the birthing holt, which, for reasons we will discover, is located well away from the water. So when an otter can’t find a territory to call his or her own, or possibly when there is not enough food, he keeps on travelling until, as with any river, he reaches the sea. Saltwater, freshwater – it is all the same to an otter. Coastlines offer the same opportunities for raising a family. Let’s face it, if your kind has been able to span so many continents and landmasses, you are going to be pretty adaptable.

      It is, however, worth making a distinction here between sea otters and otters that live by the sea. Kuschta – and every single otter that has ever existed in the British Isles – is of the family Lutra lutra, more commonly referred to as the Eurasian or European otter, which is one of thirteen different known otter species around the globe. As the name suggests, the European otter is indigenous to Europe, but also to Asia and North Africa, with a truly phenomenal spread across the northern hemisphere. West to east, with a few exceptions, such as the Mediterranean islands, this species walks every landmass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. From northern Russia to the Indian Ocean, snowy Finland, dusty Morocco, the foothills of the Himalayas, humid Thailand or the frozen shores of the Bering Sea – if you know where to look, you’ll find Lutra lutra in all these lands.

      On the other hand, sea otters – Enhydra lutris – are an entirely different species altogether, found along the shallow coastal waters of Russia, California and Alaska in the northern Pacific Ocean. They rarely venture onto land, living entirely in the water, and are famous for floating belly up in the kelp forest that hugs the shoreline. Conversely, British otters that live by the sea are just your normal inland otters that have picked a different type of home. In the Scottish islands, where they thrive, this way of life is the practical alternative, where there is more productive coastline than freshwater river or loch.

      As the sky started to show fire red behind the grey clouds in the pre-dawn, Kuschta knew it was time to move. She had seen and heard nothing during her night-time vigil. Neither friend nor foe had broken the silence or the surface of the eel pool. Stretching her stiff body on the beam, she knew she should have used the darkness to hunt, but with the sun coming up fast it was now too late. Darkness is the friend of otters; they navigate their world in the secret time between dusk and dawn. Daylight is the time for rest, night the time for travel, food and adventure; this much Kuschta had learnt from her mother. Impelled by the rising sun, Kuschta needed to make it back to safety or at least somewhere familiar. Sliding into the water, she swam quickly upstream, sending out unruly waves that rocked at the reeds on either bank, first startling a moorhen who let out an anguished squawk of protest, and then a water vole who simply paused his weaving amongst the stems until the commotion was past. Silhouetted against her skyline, the cattle grazed in the meadows, their scrunching remarkably noisy, even to her ears. A fox trotted across a bridge, no doubt heading, just as she was, to a daytime lair. The dawn chorus was reaching fever pitch as the birds laid territorial claim to a busy day ahead. The rural community of creature kind was resetting the natural order of things as the night shift headed for bed and the day shift repopulated a valley in all the pomp of its summer plumage.

      Heading for the crack willow couch, Kuschta sensed her life had changed. She had no expectation of finding a familiar body settled on the spongy, rotten wood. She was alone, and that, for now at least, was the way it would be. Pushing herself head first through the willow screen, she settled into the couch. Hunger was now her greatest concern. For a while she stared out from her hide as the river slowly woke up. A trout sipped at insects caught in the surface film. Damselflies began their hovering dance.