A drowning
May. 19th, 2006 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
otterfamilyTonight, a reliable eyewitness reported to me that an otter was drowned in a crab trap at Trinidad pier last Friday evening, May 12th. A man was sport crabbing off the pier, the otter dove down to investigate his trap, and it got its head caught in the gate mechanism. The eyewitness said what happened was entirely accidental. The crabber was reportedly so distressed by the otter's death that he disowned the trap and gave it away to the eyewitness's son.
When I heard about this drowning, my heart sank. Scoots is notorious for raiding crab traps. She's quite brazen about it and can be very persistent in her efforts to take whatever food a crabber might be using for bait. So I am very much afraid that the dead otter is Scoots, especially since the drowning occurred right around the time she disappeared. My last sighting of Scoots was on the 6th, and the last time I saw her sign on the dock was the 8th. I was in Crescent City on the 12th, and I didn't get to the pier until 8:30PM. By then, there was no one there, and no sign that an otter had been on the dock that day, either.
There has been at least one otter here occasionally during the past week, however; in fact, there was one here last evening, even though all I saw of it was its scat. I'm hoping perhaps beyond hope that Scoots is still alive and OK and nursing her babies nearby. Deep down, though, I am fearing the worst. This could be the end. If Scoots is dead, the maternal lineage that Old Mama founded here two decades ago is dead, too. That's the ultimate calamity that I've dreaded ever since 1992 when the family structure first began to collapse. I really believed it was all over way back then, but I was wrong. Please, let me be wrong again. Please, oh please! Let there be a happy ending: for the otters, and for me...
When I heard about this drowning, my heart sank. Scoots is notorious for raiding crab traps. She's quite brazen about it and can be very persistent in her efforts to take whatever food a crabber might be using for bait. So I am very much afraid that the dead otter is Scoots, especially since the drowning occurred right around the time she disappeared. My last sighting of Scoots was on the 6th, and the last time I saw her sign on the dock was the 8th. I was in Crescent City on the 12th, and I didn't get to the pier until 8:30PM. By then, there was no one there, and no sign that an otter had been on the dock that day, either.
There has been at least one otter here occasionally during the past week, however; in fact, there was one here last evening, even though all I saw of it was its scat. I'm hoping perhaps beyond hope that Scoots is still alive and OK and nursing her babies nearby. Deep down, though, I am fearing the worst. This could be the end. If Scoots is dead, the maternal lineage that Old Mama founded here two decades ago is dead, too. That's the ultimate calamity that I've dreaded ever since 1992 when the family structure first began to collapse. I really believed it was all over way back then, but I was wrong. Please, let me be wrong again. Please, oh please! Let there be a happy ending: for the otters, and for me...
