fraggle said:
I've never seen a river otter, but sea otters are adorable!
I once camped with a guy who claimed, credibly, to have raced a river otter while ice skating. He was skating on clear ice on a wide spot in a mid-sized stream in Michigan, and the otter tracked directly under his skates while swimming upside down under the ice, for the length of the pool.
Another account: a guy (different camping trip) bicycling down a logging road comes up on an otter, which instead of leaving the road stands up on its hind legs and watches him pass not three feet away, sniffing the air and twitching its whiskers. He thought it had never seen a bicyclist before, and didn't know what he was.
I see them always in the early morning, around sunrise or just before, in groups of three to five in the water, passing through - they come over and check me out, chirr and whistle and "blow" and pop up and down, and roll off in a series of dives and surfacing look-backs. It's always a surprise.
They leave bounding, sliding, intricately playful tracks in the snow; their paths full of loops and scoots and double backs and tussle marks. I have seen these tracks on the river under the main freeway bridge over the Mississippi from downtown Minneapolis, left the night before.
They are a solid, muscular, strong animal, heavier than they look - unlike a lot of winter footpads, they are not a light thing buried in a fluffy cush of fur. And those teeth are serious, the jaw robust. The family vibe resemblance to a wolverine sometimes flashes for a second or two, when they are close. I would not contest a fish kill with even just one of them.
