otterfamily | Entries tagged with scoots

With the death of Scoots and the end of Old Mama's maternal lineage, 2006 was a truly calamitous year; the worst since 1992, when all three resident adult females died. In terms of actual otter sightings, though, 2006 was absolutely THE worst year since my formal sessions began 21 summers ago. Out of 248 session, I saw otters only 77 times...

This is a screengrab from the video footage I took on the very last day I ever saw Scoots, when she had only a double-digit number of hours left to live. It's the best image on the whole tape, and even though she doesn't look her best here, I think it's a nice picture of old Skittles.

There are a couple more good grabs of Scoots here and here. I do think the first one is the best of the three, though...

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...

I wasn't planning on going to the pier tonight, but it was fortunate that I did. First, I am 95% sure I saw Slick (Scoots's son). It was definitely a "sharptooth" in the prime of life, not a juvenile like I thought I saw a few days ago. Plain face, slick fur, calm and collected, and with a dive-tail like Slick's, too. If he'd only come up on the dock, I'm sure I could have confirmed him 100%. That made me feel somewhat relieved.

I was also happy to get my first "nose" of the summer (touching a curious otter on its nose). (The way things are going, it might also be my last.)

But most importantly, I ran into the man and his son who were involved with finding Scoots on May 12th. I now know much more about the circumstances of her death.

First of all, the "eyewitness" that discovered the otter in the crab trap wasn't the man, it was his 11-year-old son.

Second, the distraught man who gave the boy the crab trap wasn't the trap's owner, it was the harbormaster himself. I know Craig, and I know he would have been very upset to find one of our otters dead like that.

Third, the crab trap had evidently been abandoned for several days to a week when Scoots's body was found inside on the 12th. This frankly angers me, because there's a sign at the entrance to the pier that specifically says that crab traps are not to be left unattended. If they'd just enforced their own rule and confiscated the trap like they're supposed to, Scoots might still be alive.

I saw the actual trap tonight, too. The way the gate mechanism works, it is an absolute death trap for otters. Disturbingly, the bait shop at the pier sells this exact same type trap. I'm going to have to talk with them about that. They not only shouldn't be selling it, they should ban that type of crab trap from being used at the pier altogether.

And the location where the trap was placed; well, it was just feet away from Scoots's favorite spot on the dock - the northwest corner. She couldn't possibly have missed seeing it.

The boy told me that the otter really stank. It had already been dead a long time.

Looking back in my notes, the last time I saw Scoots's sign on the dock was May 8. Based upon what I was told tonight, I now believe that is the actual day she drowned.

Current Mood: upset

Yesterday, I was looking in my old notes, and I found that it was exactly 10 years ago this month that I gave a certain black-furred yearling female her name. I usually wait until a young otter is 1 year old before I give it its "adult name." It can take that long to learn to recognize an individual for its appearance and behavioral idiosyncrasies, which are the two things I typically base a name on. Anyway, "Black Pup," as I originally called her, had developed one characteristic as a yearling that really made her stand out from the other otters. She swam so fast that she almost seemed to hydroplane along the water's surface. Watching her swim past the end of the pier one day, I looked down and remarked to myself, "Boy, she sure scoots!". Thus was the youngster christened.

I didn't actually call her "Scoots" often, though. I have this tendency to mangle animals' names for some reason, so more typically I'd call her "Skittles," or "Skiddeley." Or if I was feeling particularly silly, maybe "Skiddeley-Skadiddeley," or "Skiddeley-oots," or even "Skiddeley-iddeley-oots." (I know, I'm nuts - about otters!) Whatever I called her, though, she didn't usually pay me much attention. When she did, it was a noteworthy occasion. Like this time in the summer of 1998, when Scoots tentatively touched her whiskery muzzle to my outstretched hand.

In her later years, however, Scoots was a lot more aloof and unapproachable. She very much lived in her own world. And even though I was with her on the dock literally hundreds of times, I somehow doubt Scoots ever saw me as being more worthy of her attention than any of the other strange two-legged creatures that infested her domain.

But Scoots had another trait that made her stand out: her intelligence. Scoots was without a doubt the most intelligent adult female I knew over all those years. And since even the dumbest female otter is smarter than the smartest male, that made Scoots the most intelligent otter of them all. Sometimes she was scary-smart; cunning, I might even say an "evil genius." One thing for sure, Scoots proved to be too smart for her own good. I can't elaborate on that last statement right now, but it was oh so true...

This evening, I found the carcass of an otter on the beach by the pier.

It was Scoots.

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After sitting quietly beside her for awhile, I buried her higher up on the beach.

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And so, after two decades, it is finally over. In 1986, I set out to follow the daily lives of a mother otter and her young. Twenty years and 5 otter generations later, it has all come to an end, here, now.

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I feel like a father who has outlived all of his children. These otters became my family after I lost my own in 1985. But all these years on, my otter family is gone now, too. I can't even begin to express how sad and empty that makes me feel...

While there does remain a theoretical possibility that Scoots is still alive, deep down, I am certain she's gone. And in that acceptance, I was finally able to cry for her yesterday; for Scoots, for her doomed babies, and perhaps most of all for Scoots's great-grandmother–Old Mama–whose lineage stretching back unbroken to the beginning of otter time is now ended.

But the otters' story isn't over. In fact, their story has yet to be told. For they all can be made to live again through my recollections, and my words. I think that is my duty now: now that the principal players themselves are gone.

So, I think for the most part I will turn this journal from one describing current events into a collection of reminiscences. The otters' 5-generation-long story is a great tale: maybe one of the greatest real-life animal adventures ever. It should be a book, really, and hopefully, some day, it will be. But, for the time being, I'll call it a work-in-progress. And its title: "The Treasure of Trinidad Bay."

Tonight, 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...

Current Mood: desolate

Three of my old papers have recently been published on the web. Actually, I shouldn't call them papers; they are really just reports/notes. They weren't written in the form of formally-published journal articles, nor were they peer-reviewed. However, they are the only scholarly works of mine that have been published in any form to date, and although one or two of my conclusions haven't stood the test of time, the basic descriptions of the otters' behavior and accounts of events that took place remain true and factual.

"Social Organization and Behavioral Ontogeny of Otters (Lutra canadensis) in a Coastal Habitat in Northern California"
https://www.otterspecialistgroup.org/Bulletin/Volume4/Shannon_1989.html

"Progress on Californian Otter Research"
https://www.otterspecialistgroup.org/Bulletin/Volume6/Shannon_1991.html

"Progress on California Otter Research: 1991"
https://www.otterspecialistgroup.org/Bulletin/Volume7/Shannon_1992.html

N.b., the "abstracts" were not written by me, but were added by the person who adapted the text for web publication. The anglisized spellings were also not in my original manuscripts.

There is a fourth (and final) report in the series that has not yet been put up on this site. It describes the calamitous events of 1992 and the collapse of the maternal system here. Fourteen years later, the familial structure of this population has still not recovered, and appears today to be teetering on the brink of final destruction.

EDIT: The fourth report has now been posted:

"Behavior of Otters in a Coastal Marine Habitat: Abstract of Work in Progress"
https://www.otterspecialistgroup.org/Bulletin/Volume8/Shannon_1993.html

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Scoots has vanished again. Perhaps she has taken her newborns to her new "home away from home" where she disappeared to from January-April. Wherever she's gone, I hope she and her pups are safe.

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And I discovered yesterday that a fair number of the DVD master disks of my converted VHS tapes were burned on defective media. Looks like my work on that project is not yet finished after all.

I want to welcome those who've recently friended my otter blog. Having a decent number of interested readers now will give me more reason to post. I was going to formally debut this journal last spring, but as events transpired, the otters gave me little or nothing substantive to write about in 2005.

I truly pray Scoots will keep her babies this year! The main reason for the population's decline over the past decade is its 90%+ pup mortality rate. In fact, Scoots's son from 2002 is the only offspring born in the last 9 years who has survived to adulthood. Year after year, the population is growing older and individuals are dying off without being replaced by new young. Inevitably, this will result in a local extinction. Scoots has this year and maybe next to produce a female heir, or it is all over for the otter population at Trinidad Bay?

Scoots has been looking awfully ragged since she returned. She's abnormally thin, and her fur is in terrible shape. Now I know why. The old girl has new babies! This evening, I saw her enter a den that is used exclusively as a nursery for newborns. This is great news! Now if Scoots will only decide to keep them this year. I can only hope. Literally. All I can do is hope...

Current Mood: hopeful

I never totally gave up hope on Scoots, and this evening, there she was, back home after a 77-day disappearing act. Hooray! I'll never know where she went, but I don't really care. All that matters is that she's back. More good news: Scoots has mate marks on the back of her neck, which means she's still reproductively active at the ripe old age of 11 years. It might also mean she has a litter of new pups hidden away somewhere. Here's hoping still!

Current Mood: ecstatic

Another month has passed, and there's still no sign of Scoots. I'm afraid she might be dead. Whatever has happened, her absence is very discouraging. I've stopped going to the pier in the mornings. I never see anybody then; it's a complete waste of time. Honestly, if I didn't work in Trinidad, I would have no reason to go to the pier anymore. Some good news: I did see the older of the two males last night; the bad news: it was only my 3rd otter sighting of the whole month. Like I said, it's hardly worthwhile going anymore...

I'm afraid it looks like it might finally be over. It's been one whole month since I last saw Scoots. It's not normal for a resident female to leave her home territory like this. Well, let me rephrase that. It's not normal, but it's not unheard of. Both her mother and her grandmother vanished for more than a month at some point, and her grandaunt Scarnose was gone for a record 319 days back in 1991-92. So I can't give up hope. Still, it's very worrisome to go out day after day and not see Scoots. The pessimistic part of me is starting to think that this might finally be The End.

I had such high hopes for this journal. I thought for sure that I was going to be writing happy entries about bouncing baby otters this summer, but now I am certain that this year's pups didn't survive. Scoots has "opted-out" of motherhood once again. I really thought she was smart enough to know that if she wanted to have companionship again, she was going to have to make it herself by raising her babies. But no. Scoots has demonstrated her contrary nature yet again, and she's condemned both of us to solitude until next year. (IF there's a next year.)

Current Mood: crushed

Until this evening, I was sure Scoots had given birth to new pups this spring. Now I am much less certain. Normally, new mothers are very intolerant of the presence of other otters, especially males, but tonight, Scoots was friendly and playful with both of the young males she encountered. She also showed no sign of lactation whatever; her belly is totally flat. This by itself isn't terribly surprising - mothers don't usually start to really 'show' until July, but they should at least have some visible paunchiness by now. Scoots shows none at all. And that combined with her amicable behavior with the two males... well, it's enough to cast some doubt on there being new pups this year. I'll know for sure one way or another about 1 week from now.