J Scott Shannon

Here's Little Mama inspecting my shoe.




My friend, Dan Lorey, captured the bigger picture.




Trinidad, California, August 15, 2003.

 

Going through the 2007 video frame by frame, I found quite a few individual images that really stood out to me. In these two, Slick to my eye looks exactly like his mother in one frame, and milliseconds later, he looks like a clone of his other direct matrilineal forebear: Little Mama.

Slick looks like Scoots's reincarnation here:





Then, after turning his head ever-so-slightly, he's the spitting image of his grandmother:




And he REALLY looks like Little Mama in this one...




I know that almost everyone reading this probably can't see any difference between the top images, but trust me, the degree of Slick's resemblance to his maternal kin in these two frames is almost spooky. It's also kind of surprising to me, though, because in his younger years, I didn't think Slick had much of "the family resemblance." But now that his fur is taking on the "grizzled" appearance of age - especially in his face - he clearly looks like the rightful inheritor of his lineage.

 

I'm still devastated by the loss of Scoots, but I'm beginning to come to an acceptance of how events have turned out over the years. I do try to think of myself as a "glass-half-full" kind of person, emphasizing more what I have rather than what I lack. And looking back, what I have is an amazing real-life adventure story of some truly remarkable animals. It's a terrible shame that Old Mama's maternal line died out, but the fact is, it's a true miracle that any of them survived for any length of time at all. From the very first day I saw an otter in Trinidad harbor, I worried about the otters living in such close proximity to humans - the most unpredictable and dangerous animals on Earth. I realized very quickly that if someone meant to harm the otters, they could all be killed in very short order. The fact that they survived over a span of 4 generations while crossing paths with well over 100,000 humans over 20 years... it's simply incredible that the population lasted as long as it did.

And in the end, I have to accept the fact that, to a large extent, the otters themselves were responsible for their fate. The fact is, Little Mama and her two elder daughters failed in their duty to reproduce. Little Mama lost her pups so early and so often that she eventually forgot completely how to be a mother. And Scoots and Mister together failed completely over a period of 8 years to produce even one female heir to the lineage; Scoots herself waiting until she was 7 years old before she raised her first litter. That's like a human waiting until they're 50 for their first child. What folly. What utter folly.

No, it's a tragedy how things turned out, no doubt. But like I said, it's really miraculous that it all went on for so long in the first place. That's at least some consolation. Still, when I'm out there on the pier all alone, it's hard for my heart to bear. I feel so lonely without my girls. They truly were the great bright light of my life, and I do miss them so...