Ten years past
Dec. 7th, 2017 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
otterfamilyAfter studying the behavior of the river otters of Trinidad Bay, California, for a quarter of a century, I saw my last otter there ten years ago today.
I guess I'm supposed to say something like, "It doesn't seem that long ago," but it really does feel as though it's been much longer than a decade. Seems more like a lifetime has passed since then, actually...
It ended so spectacularly badly, is it any wonder I've shoved it all to the back of my mind? It was literally a lutrine Shakespearean tragedy: treachery layered upon treachery, murder after murder of innocents, and in the end, all of the players – heroine and villainesses alike – died. Only I – the audience of the generations-long performance – was spared death, leaving the theatre haunted by a Cassandra-like story that no one else could possibly believe.
Occasionally, someone will say to me, "You should write a book about the otters." I always shake my head no. Why? Because I know it would be a wasted effort. Witness: my otter website – which does tell at least the happy parts of the story – gets almost no traffic, despite it having been online for seventeen years. My email address is on every page, but can you guess how many emails I've gotten this past year inquiring about my study, which was the longest and most thorough of its kind in the history of science? ZERO, down from a grand total of two emails the year before.
So why should I write a book on a subject that is obviously of no interest to anyone? I already feel like I threw away twenty-five years of my life for nothing. No. I will not waste any more of whatever time I may still have left, and furthermore, mostly for the otters' sake, I intend to take all of their dark, dirty secrets to my grave.
I guess I'm supposed to say something like, "It doesn't seem that long ago," but it really does feel as though it's been much longer than a decade. Seems more like a lifetime has passed since then, actually...
It ended so spectacularly badly, is it any wonder I've shoved it all to the back of my mind? It was literally a lutrine Shakespearean tragedy: treachery layered upon treachery, murder after murder of innocents, and in the end, all of the players – heroine and villainesses alike – died. Only I – the audience of the generations-long performance – was spared death, leaving the theatre haunted by a Cassandra-like story that no one else could possibly believe.
Occasionally, someone will say to me, "You should write a book about the otters." I always shake my head no. Why? Because I know it would be a wasted effort. Witness: my otter website – which does tell at least the happy parts of the story – gets almost no traffic, despite it having been online for seventeen years. My email address is on every page, but can you guess how many emails I've gotten this past year inquiring about my study, which was the longest and most thorough of its kind in the history of science? ZERO, down from a grand total of two emails the year before.
So why should I write a book on a subject that is obviously of no interest to anyone? I already feel like I threw away twenty-five years of my life for nothing. No. I will not waste any more of whatever time I may still have left, and furthermore, mostly for the otters' sake, I intend to take all of their dark, dirty secrets to my grave.
