A happy ending
The dock area is closed now, meaning another summer season has come to an end. I only saw otters once, but that was enough to make worthwhile all my tribulations of the past 10 months. I'm content, because I know that, wherever the otter family is living now, they are alive, and they are safe, and those are the most important things to me. And Slick still lives, and through him, the old blood line will continue.
Slick also taught me two final lessons, one of which is that a male will sometimes leave his birth area to take up permanent residence somewhere else. I'd never had firm evidence for this before, as all the males born at Trinidad in the past remained there their whole life. But now I know that a male will disperse to another area to live in proximity to a female to whom he is bonded.
Slick's also shown me that an adult male can become a full-time cohabitating member of a family group of a mother and her young. I hadn't seen this since 1983, when I was first starting to watch the otters, but back then, I wasn't quite certain about what I was seeing. Granted, I only saw Slick and his family once, but I saw enough to know that this had been going on for quite a while. And taking up permanent residence with the neighboring family really was the only satisfactory explanation for why he had apparently vanished completely from Trinidad Bay.
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Finally, I wanted to share a picture taken during what were probably my final moments of watching otters at Trinidad, just after 9PM on August 19.
There are actually two otters on the rocks at right, but they're too indistinct to be recognizable. The picture captures a typical moment, though – me, the lone watcher, seeing things that no one else can see. I'm glad I wasn't really alone that particular night, though. My friend Dan took this picture. I was so glad he was there then. At least I got to share my Happy Ending with someone else who really knows what these animals mean to me.
Slick also taught me two final lessons, one of which is that a male will sometimes leave his birth area to take up permanent residence somewhere else. I'd never had firm evidence for this before, as all the males born at Trinidad in the past remained there their whole life. But now I know that a male will disperse to another area to live in proximity to a female to whom he is bonded.
Slick's also shown me that an adult male can become a full-time cohabitating member of a family group of a mother and her young. I hadn't seen this since 1983, when I was first starting to watch the otters, but back then, I wasn't quite certain about what I was seeing. Granted, I only saw Slick and his family once, but I saw enough to know that this had been going on for quite a while. And taking up permanent residence with the neighboring family really was the only satisfactory explanation for why he had apparently vanished completely from Trinidad Bay.
----------
Finally, I wanted to share a picture taken during what were probably my final moments of watching otters at Trinidad, just after 9PM on August 19.
There are actually two otters on the rocks at right, but they're too indistinct to be recognizable. The picture captures a typical moment, though – me, the lone watcher, seeing things that no one else can see. I'm glad I wasn't really alone that particular night, though. My friend Dan took this picture. I was so glad he was there then. At least I got to share my Happy Ending with someone else who really knows what these animals mean to me.